Written in 1925 but not published in Russia for another 62 years, Bulgakov’s tale is a biting satire of the claim that communism will create a Better Man. Surgeon Preobrazhensky implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a drunken Bolshevik into a good-hearted stray dog he calls Sharik. The result, the savage “Sharikov”, is a monstrous travesty of every communist ideal who becomes a rapist and a cat-strangler. The narrator’s creation of the cast of characters, including the dog, is brilliant and brings out the blackness of Bulgakov’s comedy.

A Dog’s Heart, Bulgakov’s 1925 satire on Stalinist Russia’s vision of transforming mankind, is ideal for reading aloud. Roy McMillan throws heart and soul into the opening howls of the tatty mongrel from whose point of view the story is at first told, and then in narrating the rest of the wacky tale of a surgeon’s efforts to make the dog human.
The problem is that he is as louche and outrageous a man as he was a dog. But that doesn’t disqualify him from denouncing the Professor to the secret police. The story ends with as much aplomb as it starts: grins throughout guaranteed.

[…] I greatly enjoyed Roy McMillan’s perfect reading of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, A Dog’s Heart. This is perfect satire commenting not just on human nature but on 1920s Russia, when communism produced some strange paradoxes. In this tale we meet a respected surgeon who transplants human glands into a stray dog with dire results. The dog takes on all of the worst traits of the human donor.
Sadly, Bulgakov never lived to see this short novel – or any of his plays – published. Stalin banned all of his work although he spared the writer from the dire fate of some of the other intellectuals of his era. This unabridged audiobook offers many chuckles as well as food for thought.