The Heart of a Dog (1925)

At the center of this novel, set in the mid-1920s, is a brilliant surgeon named Professor Preobrazhensky, who undertakes an unprecedented experiment. He transplants a human pituitary gland into a homeless dog, which transforms into a human before his very eyes. However, he behaves terribly brazenly: he can drink, smoke and swear like any hardened drunkard from the back alleys and immediately moves into the professor's Moscow apartment as its new owner. This satire on the entire Soviet system and the "new power" of the proletariat was, of course, not approved by censors; the story was not published until 1987, well after the author’s death. The most famous screen adaptation of the novel was directed by Russian director Vladimir Bortko, who won several awards at international film festivals.

Translated by Kathleen Cook-Horujy & Avril Pyman, Publisher Raduga, 1990