Dead Souls describes the gambits of a quixotic opportunist in provincial Russia who sets out to buy deceased serfs at a low cost from their owners. Chichikov requires evidence of "property," since he wishes to marry an heiress, & is able to amass the "souls" because their owners must pay taxes on them until they are officially declared dead in the rolls of the next census. An affable & personable business man, he is wined & dined in luxurious mansions & humble crofts, proclaimed a man of standing, & thought to be odd & delightful. Gogol's panorama of fraudulence is lasting allegory & aligns him with Swift, Voltaire, Balzac & Dickens as one of the world's arch-satirists.--From back cover