Many have remarked on the foresight Bulgakov shows in A Dog's Heart. By the end the professor is warning that his creation is more dangerous than ridiculous; that he has created something diabolical in its savagery. Bulgakov seems to anticipate the bloody, fratricidal war which was about to begin within the Soviet communist party, which would end with Stalin triumphant. A cute collection of essays from people who class themselves as dog lovers, and write about this love they have for human's most faithful and loving companions. As a huge dog lover myself, I was really looking forward to this collection and while I did enjoy most stories, I unfortunately didn't love all of them which just tends to be the way with any collection, AB - Collaborative essay commissioned by editors Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and Jessica J Lee for their collection 'Dog Hearted: Essays on Our Fierce and Familiar Companions'. Reflecting on the communicative and narrative complexities of dog-ownership, with themes including language acquisition and impossibility, family, concepts of 'training' and discovery via reflections on the 'canine memoir' as a genre and dog-protagonists in Virginia Woolf, Eileen Myles, Bryher and HD's bibliographies and biographies. El libro comienza con los pensamientos que tiene el perro ante el entorno que lo rodea, su encuentros con Transfíguriev hasta enlazar con la narración ya en tercera persona de los sucesos fantásticos que vivirán los personajes. A key work of early modernism, this is the superbly comic story of a Soviet scientist and a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Attempting a medical first, the scientist transplants the glands of a petty criminal into the dog and, with that, turns a distinctly worryingly human animal loose on the city. The new, lecherous, vulgar, Engels-spouting Sharik soon finds his niche in governmental bureaucracy as the official in charge of purging the city of cats.

The essays see each author explore their relationship with dogs. "Carl Phillips asks how wildness is tamed and indeed, if it can be; Esmé Weijun Wang finds moments of stillness in the simple act of observing her dog; Cal Flyn befriends a sled dog in Finland," the synopsis reads. Other contributors include Chris Pearson, Jessica Pan, Buchanan, Sharlene Teo, Alice Hiller, Lee, Nell Stevens and Eley Williams, Nina Mingya Powles, Ned Beauman and Evie Wyld. For a novelist who takes as his theme the future woes of his country, the act of prophecy has two parts: the imaginative construction of a likely future, and a kind of charm against that future actually coming about. The two exclude each other. If the prophecy fails to come true, the writer may comfort himself with the thought that his writing formed part of the reason his society was able to evade its fulfilment. In Bulgakov's case, the novelist's success as a prophet signified his doom as a novelist within his lifetime. this was a fantastic collection of short stories and essays by fourteen different authors. illustrated by rowan hisayo buchanan (who I met in my creative writing undergrad, hii!), we get to fall in love with each of the writer’s dogs and truly get to experience all the different emotions they bring out in us. When the time comes to operate on the dog, however, Preobrazhensky and Bormenthal switch to representing a different kind of bourgeois intellectual - those like Trotsky and Lenin who believed that in Karl Marx they had found a scientific system which could be imposed on human beings, and proceeded to carry out a great experiment in the form of a revolution, with the Russian people as the subject, and Russia as the laboratory.A Dog's Heart seemed fresh six decades after Bulgakov described the travails of disparate households crammed into apartment buildings seized from the wealthy, because people were still crammed into the same apartment buildings, barely renovated in all that time. Sixty years on, Pravda was still indigestible. Senior medical consultants were still, like Professor Preobrazhensky, using the leverage of their rare skills to gain or keep material advantages - big flats, for instance - from a corrupt communist leadership. Essential goods were still in short supply. Nuevamente es un experimento científico, un descubrimiento de la ciencia, el que Bulgákov utiliza para disfrazar su aversión al incipiente comunismo que comenzaba a regir con mano dura la Unión Soviética. When a stray dog dying on the streets of Moscow is taken in by a wealthy professor, he is subjected to medical experiments in which he receives various transplants of human organs. As he begins to transform into a rowdy, unkempt human by the name of Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, his actions distress the professor and those surrounding him, although he finds himself accepted into the ranks of the Soviet state. It is generally interpreted as an allegory of the communist revolution and "the revolution's misguided attempt to radically transform mankind." [2] Its publication was initially prohibited in the Soviet Union, but it circulated in samizdat until it was officially released in the country in 1987. It was almost immediately adapted into a movie, which was aired in late 1988 on First Channel of Soviet Television, gained almost universal acclaim and attracted many readers to the original Bulgakov text. The whole horror of the situation is that he now has a human heart, not a dog's heart. And about the rottenest heart in all creation!"

In the embryonic USSR, the line between literary criticism and repression was blurring. Ultimately, it was GlavLit, the Soviet censor, that would decide the fate of A Dog's Heart. But the police spy had an influence, and his review was hostile. "Bulgakov hates and despises the Soviet regime," he wrote. "Soviet power has a true, stern and clear-seeing guardian in GlavLit, and as long as its opinion coincides with mine, this book will never see the light of day." Ultimately, the gruesome experiment does not work, and Preobrazhensky's reflection on it all again takes on the most direct political connotations. One commonly-accepted interpretation is that Bulgakov was trying to show all the inconsistencies of the system in which Sharikov, a man with a dog's intelligence, could become an important part. As a dog lover, I was intrigued when I heard that Dr Paul W Ivey was about to pen a book about the human – dog connection/relationship. Having read other entertaining and educational books by the author, I wanted to read this one as well. I had an idea that I would not be disappointed and I was right. A key work of early modernism, this is the superbly comic story of a Soviet scientist and a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Attempting a medical first, the scientist transplants the glands of a petty criminal into the dog and, with that, turns a distinctlyN2 - Collaborative essay commissioned by editors Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and Jessica J Lee for their collection 'Dog Hearted: Essays on Our Fierce and Familiar Companions'. Reflecting on the communicative and narrative complexities of dog-ownership, with themes including language acquisition and impossibility, family, concepts of 'training' and discovery via reflections on the 'canine memoir' as a genre and dog-protagonists in Virginia Woolf, Eileen Myles, Bryher and HD's bibliographies and biographies. Despite its short size, this book has endless layers. On the surface, it is a hilariously sad story about a science experiment gone very wrong in the direction that its creator did not quite anticipate, and all the funny antics of the newly created sorta-human Sharikov. Yes, that includes obsessive and funny cat-chasing even when the dog becomes "human". What's this Doc? Did you just stir up a recipe for breeding communists? And look at how this dog, this animal, is thinking like a Commie! Oy!

At the house, Sharik gets to know Dr. Preobrazhensky's household, which includes Doctor Ivan Arnoldovich Bormenthal (the professor's student and protégé) and two female servants: Zinaida Prokofievna Bunina and Darya Petrovna Ivanova. Despite the professor's vocal anti-communism, his frequent medical treatment of the RCP(b) leadership makes him untouchable. As a result, he refuses to decrease his seven-room flat and treats the Bolsheviks on the housing committee, led by Schwonder, with unveiled contempt. Impressed by his new master, Sharik slips easily into the role of "a gentleman's dog". To his surprise, a successful surgeon, Filipp Filippovich Preobrazhensky, arrives and offers the dog a piece of sausage. The only possible way to deal with a living creature. Terror's useless for dealing with an animal, whatever level of development it might be at. I've always said that, I still say it and I always will. They're wrong to think that terror will do them any good. No sir, no sir, it won't, no matter what colour it is: white, red or even brown!’ Bugakov's own way of life and his witty criticism of the ugly realities of life in the Soviet Union caused him much trouble. His story "Heart of a Dog" (1925) is a bitter satire about the loss of civilized values in Russia under the Soviet system. Soon after, Bulgakov was interrogated by the Soviet secret service, OGPU. After interrogations, his personal diary and several unfinished works were confiscated by the secret service. His plays were banned in all theaters, which terminated his income. Destitute, he wrote to his brother in Paris about his terrible life and poverty in Moscow. Bulgakov distanced himself from the Proletariat Writer's Union because he refused to write about the peasants and proletariat. He adapted "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol for the stage; it became a success but was soon banned. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour—white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.”N1 - Edited and featuring Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Jessica J Lee, other contributors include Carl Phillips, Esmé Weijun Wang, Cal Flyn, Chris Pearson, Jessica Pan, Sharlene Teo, Alice Hiller, Nina Mingya Powles, Ned Beauman, and Evie Wyld.