Monday Begins on Saturday
1965 novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Monday Begins on Saturday (Russian: Понедельник начинается в субботу) is a 1965 satirical science fantasy novel by Soviet writers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, with illustrations by Yevgeniy Migunov. Set in a fictional town in northwestern Russia, where research in magic occurs, the novel is a satire of Soviet scientific research institutes. It offers an idealistic view of the scientific work ethic, as reflected in the title which suggests that the scientists' weekends are nonexistent. Their idealism is contrasted by inept bureaucrats and a dishonest, show-horse professor.
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The "Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry" (or, in Andrew Bromfield's 2002 translation "the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy", abbreviated to "NITWITT"), located in the fictional Northern Russian town of Solovets, is portrayed as a place where everyone either works diligently, or else their loss of honesty is symbolized by their ears becoming more and more hairy. These hairy-eared people are viewed with disdain by the idealistic scientists. The more morally backward specimens are the most self-aggrandizing and sure of their own significance, while conducting the more ridiculous and nonsensical pseudo-research, to justify their position.
It has a sequel, Tale of the Troika, a much more grotesque satire, which describes Soviet bureaucracy at its worst and features many of the same characters.