Monday Begins on Saturday

Blurb

Monday Begins on Saturday is a 1965 science fiction / science fantasy novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky with illustrations by Yevgeniy Migunov. Set in a fictional town in northern Russia, where highly classified research in magic occurs, the novel is a satire of Soviet scientific research institutes, complete with an inept administration, a dishonest, show-horse professor, and numerous equipment failures. It offers an idealistic view of the scientific work ethic, as reflected in the title which suggests that the scientists' weekends are nonexistent.
The "Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry," located in the fictional Northern Russian town of Solovets, is portrayed as a place where everyone must work hard willingly, or else their loss of honesty is symbolized by hair growing from their ears. These hairy-eared people are viewed with disdain, but, in a turn symbolic of Soviet times, many of them stay in the institute because it provides them with a comfortable living no matter what.
Tale of the Troika, which describes Soviet bureaucracy at its worst, is a sequel, featuring many of the same characters.