Monday Begins on Saturday

Monday Begins on Saturday is a 1965 science fantasy novel by Soviet writers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, with illustrations by Yevgeniy Migunov. Set in a fictional town in northern 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 an inept administration and a dishonest, show-horse professor. 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. Tale of the Troika, which describes Soviet bureaucracy at its worst, is a sequel, featuring many of the same characters. Characters and events The novel is written from the point of view of Aleksandr Ivanovich Privalov (usually called Sasha), a young programmer from Leningrad, who picks up two hitchhikers during a road trip north through Karelia. After the two find out that he is a programmer, they convince him to stay in Solovets and work together with them in the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry (abbreviated NIIChaVo in Russian, which sounds very close to "Ничего", the word for "nothing").