DEAD SOULS

This title presents with an introduction by Tony Briggs Russia in the1840s. There is a stranger in town, and he is behaving oddly. The unctuousPavel Chichikov goes around the local estates buying up 'dead souls'. Theseare the papers relating to serfs who have died since the last census, butwho remain on the record and still attract a tax demand. Chichikov iswilling to relieve their owners of the tax burden by buying the titles fora song. What he does not say is that he then proposes to take out a hugemortgage against these fictitious citizens and buy himself a nice estate inEastern Russia. Will he get away with it? Who will rumble him? Does thisnarrative contain a deeper message about Russia itself or the spiritualhealth of humanity? There is much interest and some suspense in consideringthese issues, but the real pleasure of this story lies elsewhere. It is anenjoyable comic romp through a retarded part of a backward country, apicaresque series of grotesque portraits, situations and conversationsdescribed with Gogolian humour based mainly on hyperbole. This is, quitesimply, the funniest book in the Russian language before the twentiethcentury