Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, Mirra Ginsburg ISBN: 0-8021-5059-4 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: August, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.72 (36 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Dark and majestic
Comment: Placed within the boundaries of post revolutionary Russia (October revolution 1917) this novel with its dark atmosphere pierces deeply into bones of a reader, leaving him amazed and stunned with a size to which can escalate human stupidity, and evilness and unintelligent behaviour by following the paths of some greater revoultion, of some welfare for all.
By walking the alleys of Moscow, professor Petar Petrovic Preobrazensky comes across a wanderrer dog, and after feeding him, he performs an operation on him, in which he combines part of a dead man body (dead man is alchocolic, violent, and member of communist party)with the parts of a dog.
What is caused by operation is already presented in some other novels like 'Frankestein' but here (considering that this is Bulgakov and all...) is totaly unexpected. Dog starts to transform, slowly at first, into a human being whose parts he now posesses. What becomes apparent in the process are all the bad thing one can have when "suffering" from a posession of a human heart. He losses all nobility of a dog, ant transforms himself into a man that he used o be before, with all negative sides that remained.
Association with the president of House Comitee Svonde, will lead to major problems.
Bulgakov uses his famous, fluid style, not allowing break beetween narration and dialogue, though short this novel keeps his reader glued to his chair, and doesn't allow him to leave mists of post revolutionary Moscow, mists of human spirit (in which was believed that by mere act of revolting (violent), all became different than it used to be, neglecting the fact that people that used to live under empire are the same people the now live under Lenin)
Though somewhat flawish on some places, with weak links between objects and verbs, with holes in some spaces, that should (or could) be filled with more detailed narration, this novel stands side by side with the rest of Bulgakov's work.
Thumbs up!
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Soviet Era Satire
Comment: It's just something about those Russians. I guess because they've had to put up with so much turmoil, for so long, historically; or it could be those long Russian winters; but for whatever reason they have produced a steady stream of excellent satirists for the past two hundred years. Refer to Nikolai Leskov's LAUGHTER AND GRIEF, for a mid 19th century examination of the phenomenon from someone who first noticed it. Leskov's narrator, Vatahvskov, states in a conversation amongst his colleagues that the feature most singular in Russian society is "its abundance of unpleasant surprises."
Which brings me to Bulgakov and to HEART OF A DOG, for it is a novella full of "unpleasant surprises," both happening to and instigated by, Bulgakov's singular literary creation, Sharik (aka Mr. Sharik, aka Citizen Sharikov, aka Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, commisar of cat control, etc.) Bulgakov takes an absurd situation (think of Gogol's "nose" wandering around the streets of St. Petersburg for comparison) and crafts it into a wonderful parody of the societal madhouse that was 30s Moscow under the party's intolerable decrees. His is a portrait of political correctness run amok. Citizen Shvonder, the representation of all things banal about the collectivist mentality of the era is the Bulgakov's primary target in this regard. His jealous rage at the fact that professor Phillipov is living the high life, while he and his ilk are sharing one room apartments, remains comically ineffectual. It was Bulgakov's way at getting back at all of the party appartchiks that were in fact causing him a great deal of consternation and physical hardship at the time.
A reviewer who was critical of this work as being too much akin to a Chagall painting was drawing an accurate analogy. Yet, coming from a perspective in which magical realism has become an accepted literary technique, I don't consider that a drawback. It is part of the same Russian tradition. The fanciful and the grotesque have long been an integral part of Russian fiction. Bulgakov is simply one of its more famous and adept practitioners.
BEK
Rating: 5
Summary: Heart of a Dog
Comment: This book is fantastic. Bulgakov had something to say and he said it outright. As all those busybody do-gooders out there in the world march down the road to becoming oppressors, this guy stands in the ditch and spits at them as they pass. I laughed a lot.
 |
Title: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov ISBN: 0679760806 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 19 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: The Twelve Chairs (European Classics (Northwestern Univ Pr)) by Ilia Arnoldovich Ilf, John H. C. Richardson, Maurice Friedberg, Evgeni I. Petrov, Arnold Dovich ISBN: 0810114844 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.05 |
 |
Title: The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov, Michael Glenny, Michael Gleeny ISBN: 0897332466 Publisher: Academy Chicago Pub Pub. Date: January, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Mirra Ginsburg ISBN: 0380633132 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 03 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
 |
Title: The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolai Gogol ISBN: 0375706151 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
