Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Heart Of A Dog. New York. 1968. Harcourt Brace & World. 1st American Edition. Very Good In Worn Dustjacket With Some Tears. Translated From The Russian By Michael Glenny. 146 pages. Jacket design by Appelbaum & Curtis Inc. In this grimly prophetic story, one of Russia’s most eminent literary figures satirizes Soviet Man and Soviet Society in a splendidly colorful, acidly amusing parable that will remind readers of Swift and Orwell. A world-famous Russian surgeon specializing in rejuvenation techniques transplants human glands into a dog and turns him into a man - of sorts. Idle, slovenly, foul-mouthed, he ends up as a Commissar ‘for the elimination of vagrant quadrupeds,’ and a menace to men and women as well. The lesson of the fable is clear: Man is brutish, and Soviet Man is little more than a lout who has been led to believe that he is the pinnacle of creation. If he is allowed to persist in this belief, he will become an eliminator of his fellow men. Astonishingly, the novel was written in 1925, predicting exactly the sort of callous and brutal henchmen who would carry out Stalin’s terror ten years later. A mature, polished, and extremely funny work, this is one of the most savage literary satires to come out of Russia, where it has never been published and probably never will be. MIKHAIL AFANASIEVICH BULGAKOV was born in Kiev in 1891. He studied medicine, graduating from Kiev University in 1916. in 1921 he moved to Moscow, and iii 192:3 he took up writing as a career, working in various media, as journalist, novelist, short—story writer, and above all as dramatist. An admirer of Gogol, whose DEAD SOULS he dramatized with great success, he cast a satirical eye on the Soviet Russian scene. He was charged with ‘slandering Soviet reality,’ his work was sharply criticized, and eventually suppressed altogether. When Bulgakov died in 1940, the Soviet press passed over his death in silence. Only in the 1960’s did his works begin to be published or reissued in Russia and subsequently in the West, establishing him as a towering figure in Russian literature. THE HEART OF A DOG, however, has not been published in Russia, and reached the West only in manuscript form. . keywords: Literature Translated Russia. inventory # 12182.