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,

Come now, you don't think I could let you take the rap while I shelter behind my world-wide reputation, do you? Really… I'm a Moscow University graduate, not a Sharikov.' C'mon, we all know that even world-class fame will never save Professor Preobrazhensky from Stalin's labor camps as eventually his higher-up protectors will themselves become victims of the new regime, and likely from a gunshot to the head in the middle of the night. And Bormental's fate will undoubtedly be very similar to that - just as Professor kinda-sorta anticipated already. After all, neither of them has made their unpopular views very secret. ' Yes, I don't like proletariat,' sadly agreed Philipp Philippovich." The squalor and poverty of life in the misery of a Moscow Winter, the class heavy discrepancies of society and the futility of the “rise” of the proletariat are displayed in all of their glory. A 1988 Soviet movie, Sobachye Serdtse, was made (in sepia) by Vladimir Bortko. [13] A number of sequences in the movie were shot from an unusually low dog's point of view.My Review: Anyone who's ever read The Master and Margarita already knows that Bulgakov is a rebel, an anarchist, and damn good and funny with it. His thoughts were, based on the novels I've read, contrarian in the extreme as well as profoundly sensitive to practical concerns:

This was a charming collection of essays portraying an extremely diverse cast of dogs that were both charming and confusing in equal measure. The essays were surprisingly intimate, as if the authors' dogs provided a window into their domestic lives, whether that be current or remembered, that might not otherwise have been exposed. Perhaps this intimacy and vulnerability is encouraged by the simple and honest love that most have for their canine companions, unlike the complexity of human-to-human relationships.Another way of looking at it is a satirical allegory of revolution. The dog-human being the government of prolls. The very name of human whose organs were used (a thief) What follows is a cruel experiement in which some of dog's body parts are replaced with that of a dead man. And thus sci-fiction themes of moral issues relating to genetic engineering and that kind of thing is there. The description kind of reminded me of this inhuman experiment. Disgusting, isn't it? 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. However what is not to like about this mad scientist story about how things go horribly wrong when the pituitary gland and testicles of a dead man are transplanted into a stray dog? Behold the Soviet new man constructed from death and a dog. No wonder that the opera going, traditionally bourgeois scientist can't get on with his creation. A twist on Frankenstein and his monster, but this time it is the monster that seems to be in step with the Zeitgeist in its combination of the worst in dog and man, while his creator who is at odds with the society he finds himself in and his own creation. Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe.

The story was filmed in Italian in 1976 as Cuore di cane and starred Max von Sydow as Preobrazhensky. [12] The spy was not disappointed. Two months after the readings, the prospective publishers, Nedra, wrote to Bulgakov, returning the work and telling him that even a rewrite wouldn't save it. The following year, OGPU raided Bulgakov's flat and seized the manuscript. It was returned in 1929, but it was not until 1987, more than 60 years after Bulgakov finished it and almost half a century after the writer died, that the book was published in Russia.He's concerned about me, thought the dog. A very good man. I know who he. He is a wizard, a magician, a sorcerer out of a dog's fairy tale..." Aha, so you realize now, do you? Well I realized it ten days after the operation. My only comfort is that Shvonder is the biggest fool of all. He doesn't realize that Sharikov is much more of a threat to him than he is to me. At the moment he's doing all he can to turn Sharikov against me, not realizing that if someone in their turn sets Sharikov against Shvonder himself, there'll soon be nothing left of Shvonder but the bones and the beak."

Heart of a Dog (Russian: Собачье сердце, romanized: Sobachye serdtse) is a novella by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. A biting satire of Bolshevism, it was written in 1925 at the height of the New Economic Policy, a period during which communism appeared to be relaxing in the Soviet Union. [1] It was a fun read and I took three days to complete reading the book, and would have actually finished it in one sitting as I did not want to put it down, but life intervenes. Being a lover of verse, I was happy to see Lord George Gordon Byron’s ‘Epitaph to a Dog’ included. This heartfelt tribute is a gem and all dog lovers will agree that every word is true. Part of this epitaph reads: “But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own…” 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 story then shifts from being told from the perspective of Sharik to being told from the perspective of Bormenthal by his notes on the case and then finally to a third-person perspective.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.