In this book, there is a professor who seems to be against the current Communist reforms that are sweeping the country. However, since he seems to be the physician of some high-ranking Communist individuals, he still lives in a large flat, eat good food, and so far has avoided sharing his large flat with other households. This of course annoys the Committee. Anyway, the professor sees a stray dog one day, and decides to rescue him from the street. Apparently, he planned to implant this dog with the pituitary gland and testicles of a recently dead human.
This operation turns the dog into a humanoid, a talking dog, and later on into a model Soviet citizen. He causes havoc and essentially ruins the professor's household. He gets a job as a killer of stray cats. Although at the end, the professor reverses the operation and the dog is back to his demure and canine self.
There are plenty of issues that this book addresses. First of all, it is a satire on Bolshevism. Bulgakov shows how an individual with no intelligence whatsoever can navigate the draconian and corrupt Soviet system (the dog manages to register himself as an individual with a proper name, and get the necessary documents). It is also a criticism of eugenics. The professor character in the story had the assumption that geniuses can only be produced by geniuses. This hypothesis was debunked in the end.
I was laughing for the most part as I was reading this book. It made me think, and while satire is a genre I don't always touch, this one is something that is definitely memorable, given that it highlights issues in a different perspective, bringing them to the foreground by means of humour. It is funny, yet at the same time, you realise that there's deeper issues the author is trying to tackle. I give this 4 out of 5 stars.
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