Heart of a Dog - Mikhail Bulgakov, Mirra Ginsburg (Translator)

This hilarious, brilliantly inventive novel by the author of The Master and Margarita tells the story of a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Thanks to the skills of a renowned Soviet scientist and the transplanted pituitary gland and testes of a petty criminal, Sharik is transformed into a lecherous, vulgar man who spouts Engels and inevitably finds his niche in the bureaucracy as the government official in charge of purging the city of cats.

Heart of a Dog, written in 1925, remained unpublished in the Soviet Union until 1987. Its satire is as ferocious and timely now as when it was written.