<p><em>The Engineer of Human Souls</em> is a labyrinthine comic novelthat investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, aCzech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor ofAmerican literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch with his youngstudents, and hounded by the Czech secret police, Danny is let loose toroam between past and present, adopting whatever identity that hechooses or has been imposed upon him by History.</p><p>Asadventuresome, episodic, bawdy, comic, and literary as any novel writtenin the past twenty-five years, <em>The Engineer of Human Souls</em> isworthy of the subtitle Skvorecky gave it: "An Entertainment on the OldThemes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, The Working Class, Secret Agents,Love and Death."</p>