Sharik is a hapless stray dog, baffled observer of human kind and vitriolic haterofcats. He is plucked from the streets of communistMoscow by Preobrazhensky, a medical professor, and subjected to a bizarre, human-gland-transplanting experiment. When Sharik begins to transform in weird and unexpected ways, his creator`s virtuoso scientific confidence turns rapidly to wonderment, and then to horrified soul-searching. Bulgakov`s hilarious science fiction is an angry satire of the , Utopian communist dream gone spectacularly awry, in which sinister forces lurk everywhere. Written in 1925 but immediately banned by the early Soviet government, the novella captures, in a unique style that alternates lucid realism with pulse-raising drama, the atmosphere of its rapidly changing times. Andrew Bromfield`s vibrant new translation is accompanied by an introduction by James Meek, which places the work in the context of the Russian class struggles of the era and considers the vision,...