Nikola Petkov, head of the Agrarian Party and the last significant opposition leader to defy the Communist takeover of Bulgaria, was hanged in 1947 after a show trial in Sofia. In The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov, Thomas McGonigle imagines the doomed man's thoughts as Petkov is put to death.

Petkov recalls a life of privilege interrupted by prophetic acts of violence. His father, who built the prison where Petkov would die, was assassinated on the street in 1907; Petkov's charismatic brother, a revolutionary leader, suffered the same fate years later at the hands of political enemies. Returning from abroad, Petkov took up his brother's work, at turns suffering imprisonment and rising through the Bulgarian government to become one of the signers of the armistice between his country and the U.S.S.R. during World War II. In a novel that mixes history and fiction, biography and imagination, McGonigle records Petkov's last minutes, while at the same time we see glimpses of the author at his typewriter in New York City reconstructing Petkov's thoughts as the dying man reflects on his and his country's past.