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This starts off well: Mornings he sings on the toilet.

It’s an observation made by Nikolai Kavalerov, our narrator, of Andrei Babichev. Andrei has managed to play the Soviet game and has done quite well for himself, well enough anyhow to sing on the toilet in the morning. It was Nikolai whom Andrei found drunk in the gutter one day and rescued, sort of, taking him into his household and giving him a gopher kind of job. But Nikolai will turn ingrate, as anti-heroes often do. He’s spends his time lamenting his existence: Soup served to me never cools.

And so, Nikolai looks at Andrei, a great sausage and pastry man, and one of the state’s most remarkable men. And Nikolai, just Andrei’s jester, feels . . . . Envy?

This is a satirical novel about 1927 Stalinist Russia, cryptic enough apparently not to get Olesha thrown in jail or worse, but pointed enough that he got the message to stop writing.

While this is political enough to warm the hearts of those feeling nostalgic for the Cold War,* it left me, well, cold. I get that that was then and this is now and I’m hardly politically correct, but when Olesha, to continue his theme of Envy, has Andrei’s brother observing a little girl - a very typical girl, twelve years old, dainty feet, short dress, all pink, satin, and ruffles . . . she looked like the flower known as a snapdragon - and then grabbed her by the nape and rammed her forehead into a column a few times, well it was then that I hurried to the end. Not fast enough, though, to escape another woman being beaten.
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*Wait, they did what??? And we . . .? Oh, no.