Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls is one of the best-known pieces of 19th-century Russian literature. Chichikov is a mysterious man, who arrives at a small town with a strange plan of acquiring "dead souls." Marked by eccentric characters and heated town gossip, this story is a social satire that keeps the reader guessing. The writer himself described Dead Souls as an "epic poem in prose" and a "novel in verse." Although intended by Gogol as the first part of a trilogy, the story never saw a follow-up before or after his death. The satiric story has been turned into theatre, opera, radio, television and film productions alike, including the Soviet television miniseries Dead Souls (1984).-