Heart of a Dog

There's a reason this wasn't published in Russia until 1987, and it had nothing to do with the quality of this novel. Written during the height of the NEP period, it's a transparent satire of the life of both the arrivistes and the old money.

At first I thought this was going to be a work along the lines of Jack London, as it opens with the dog as the narrator. But it quickly moves to a third person perspective (although the changes in intelligence the dog undergoes would make for a challenging first "person" perspective).

The conceit of the story is that by transplanting certain parts (such as the pituitary gland) from a (recently deceased) human into an animal, the animal could gain human form and intelligence. Of course, the newly-human dog behaves exactly the way one would expect (crudely), and sides with his benefactors enemies.

It's an easy read, would recommend.