Dead Souls

Considered one of the great novels in the Russian canon, this book is a symbolic snapshot of nineteenth-century Russian life, and an intense literary experience. The story revolves around Chichikov, a man who comes to a Russian town to buy the souls of dead peasants who are still listed on the census, setting in motion a story of greed and distrust. Narrator Tom Weiner has a deep, robust, nasally tinged voice that captures the tone of the book at the beginning, but he doesn't vary his pitch and characters enough to keep the work moving. He also reads a bit too quickly; slowing down would allow us to more easily digest the philosophical aspects of the story. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine


Some contend that DEAD SOULS, one of Gogol's defining works, was a precursor to Joseph Heller's great satirical novel CATCH-22. The irony in both runs deep, wide, and circularly; in Gogol's case, we find an early example of the antihero, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, who purchases the souls of dead Russian peasants to further his soulless career. This criminally minded social climber has left the world of corrupt bureaucracy to fleece the self-same bureaucracy in a hilarious fable of small minds in nineteenth-century rural Russia. Gordon Griffin does a marvelous plummy job of bringing DEAD SOULS through a glass, darkly. D.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine