Nikolai Gogol

As Nikolai Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls" - deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade them in - we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officers, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.