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This early novella from Mikhail Bulgakov, published in 1925, already shows the surreal comic genius that later produced The Master and Margarita, the writer's masterpiece. A kind of Frankenstein parable, Heart of a Dog is the story of a stray dog that gains a human intelligence after a prominent Moscow professor transplants human glands into the unfortunate canine's body.
--This text refers to an alternate
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Book Description
I first read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita on a balcony of the Hotel Metropole in Saigon on three summer evenings in 1971. The tropical air was heavy and full of the smells of cordite and motorcycle exhaust and rotting fish and wood-fire stoves, and the horizon flared ambiguously, perhaps from heat lightning, perhaps from bombs. Later each night, as was my custom, I would wander out into the steamy back alleys of the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep, and crouch in doorways with the people and listen to the stories of their culture and their ancestors and their ongoing lives. Bulgakov taught me to hear something in those stories that I had not yet clearly heard. One could call it, in terms that would soon thereafter gain wide currency, "magical realism". The deadpan mix of the fantastic and the realistic was at the heart of the Vietnamese mythos. It is at the heart of the present zeitgeist. And it was not invented by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as wonderful as his One Hundred Years of Solitude is. Garcia Marquez's landmark work of magical realism was predated by nearly three decades by Bulgakov's brilliant masterpiece of a novel. That summer in Saigon a vodka-swilling, talking black cat, a coven of beautiful naked witches, Pontius Pilate, and a whole cast of benighted writers of Stalinist Moscow and Satan himself all took up permanent residence in my creative unconscious. Their presence, perhaps more than anything else from the realm of literature, has helped shape the work I am most proud of. I'm often asked for a list of favorite authors. Here is my advice. Read Bulgakov. Look around you at the new century. He will show you things you need to see.
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Whoo-oo-oo-oo-hooh-hoo-oo! Oh, look at me, I am perishing in this gateway. Read the first page
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Whoo-oo-oo-oo-hooh-hoo-oo! Oh, look at me, I am perishing in this gateway. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Master of Allegory and Wit,
By
This review is from: Heart Of a Dog (Paperback)
I can't say much about this book that hasn't already been said. It's hilarious, disturbing, bitingly satirical and a profoundly apt little allegory for the forces Bulgakov saw developing in Russia after the revolution. The image of a dog-turned-man coming to occupy an official government position rounding up stray cats is absurd, funny, and just works on so many levels. I'm reminded of what Frank Herbert said about power: it's not that power corrupts, but power which attracts the corruptible. With the instincts of a dog and the behavior of a common criminal, the novel's main character is a perfect image of the type of person attracted to a bureaucracy of brutality, arbitrariness, and pure and simple inhumanity. As a reader more accustomed to perhaps dry and academic accounts of such phenomena (for example, Political Ponerology and Nuremberg Diary), it was a pleasant relief to see these ideas portrayed with such creativity and fun. Bulgakov was and is a treasure.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great read by Russia's great writer,
This review is from: Heart Of a Dog (Paperback)
This short satire addresses key issues in Russian life and government. Issues that kept Bulgakov from being published. But his approach to addressing these issues in Heart of a Dog is so humorous, so fresh, so heartwarming, heart wrenching and exciting- narrated through the thoughts of a stray dog this story takes you on a journey you won't soon forget.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Open to many interpretations ...,
By M. B. Alcat "Curiosity killed the cat, but sa... (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Heart of a Dog (Paperback)
Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) endured the difficult experience of having to live under the pressure of censorship, but has nonetheless left some interesting books that allow us to know what he thought about the process that has taking place in the newborn Soviet Russia. "Heart of a dog" is one of those books. It was written by Bulgakov in 1925, but it wasn`t published in Soviet Russia until 1987, due to the fact that it can easily be interpreted as a critical satire regarding the URSS."Heart of a dog" is the story of a stray dog, Sharik, that hasn`t led an easy life. He lives in the streets of Moscow, and eats what he can, when he can. However, one day a doctor gives him food and takes him to his home. Sharik believes that his fate has changed, but he doesn`t know that the doctor has rather strange intentions... The doctor wants to perform an experiment on Sharik, in order to learn what would happen if some human organs were transplanted to a dog. The doctor performs the operation, implanting in Sharik the pituitary gland and the testicles of a dead criminal. Against all odds, Sharik survives the operation, and from that moment on begins an extraordinary transformation, that makes him more and more human. But what kind of human is he?. Sharik can talk, and asks everybody to call him first "Mr. Sharikov", and afterwards "Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov". He also walks like a human being, and somehow resembles one... But can he think, or does he merely repeat what he hears, specially Marx`s teachings?. Has the doctor`s experiment ruined a perfectly good dog, making him a perfectly despicable "human" being that threatens to denounce counterrevolutionaries and chases cats?. I don`t want to tell you more about this book: you really should read it yourself. It isn`t long, but it is quite interesting. What is more important, it is open to many interpretations, and you can always find your own. Some people believe that for Bulgakov Sharik represented the failure of those who try to create new beings (exactly what was supposedly being done at that time in the URSS, with the "soviet man"). Others highlight the glimpses of Soviet society that "Heart of a dog" allows us to have, and think that the aim of the author was to give the reader at least an idea of what it was like to live in the URSS at that time... These few possible interpretations don't exclude others, so read this book and find them!!. Obviously, I highly recommend "Heart of a dog"... Belen Alcat
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