Review – Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov (2/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Classic/Dystopia/Satire
Length: 123 pages
Publisher:‎ GENERAL PRESS
Release Date: September 5, 2022 (first published in 1925)
ASIN: B0BBRLFN9B
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed ebook from library
Rating: 2/5 stars

“Originally published in 1925, ‘Heart of a Dog’ by Russian author and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, is a dark, fantastical satire of the failures inherent in the dream of a Communist utopia.

When a respected surgeon decides to transplant human body parts into a stray dog, he creates a monster—drunken, profligate, aggressive, and selfish. It seems the worst aspects of the donor have been transplanted as well. As his previously well-regulated home descends into riotous chaos, the doctor realizes he will have to try to reverse the operation, but the dog isn’t so keen. Wild, uproarious, and deliriously comic, Bulgakov’s short novel is at once a comment on the problems of 1920s Russia and a lasting satire on human nature.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on ebook from the library.

Thoughts: I didn’t like this. I understand this is supposed to be political satire, which admittedly isn’t really something I am in to. I also don’t think I had the right historical knowledge of this specific time and place to make some of the sub-context hit home. I thought this was hard to read; not that the subject matter was tough to read, but that the names and language used throughout were just hard to follow, and the translation done here just wasn’t the best.

This is about a doctor who transplants human body parts into a stray dog. This causes the dog to turn into a human and mimic the awful aspects of the human whose parts he inherits. It turns that dog into a horrible monster who is drunk, aggressive and just all around awful. It’s supposed to be a commentary on 1920’s Russia and human nature in general.

I didn’t find this funny just kind of disturbing and strangely vulgar. I struggled to get through this. It does bring up some conversation around human nature, but it is a pretty bleak and depressing look at human nature in general. Everyone in this book is incredibly unlikable.

I just found the whole story bizarre, difficult to read, and fairly pointless in the end. I believe I may have missed the point here, but I really did not enjoy this.

My Summary (2/5): Overall I picked this up to read because it was supposed to be a humorous and ironic novella; I did not think it was either of those things and did not enjoy it. I found it hard to read and mainly just strange and disturbing. I thought the parallels drawn to human nature were bleak and depressing. I think I missed some of the context since I don’t have much knowledge of history in Russia in the 1920’s. I finished it because it is short, it just seemed kind of pointless to me.