In this wildly imaginative satire of Soviet life, an insecure but much-published adventure novelist, Yefim Rakhlin, learns that the Writers' Union is giving fur hats to its members according to their importance—reindeer fawn for a foremost writer, muskrat for a leading writer, marmot for an outstanding writer, and so on down the line. Desperate to know where he stands in the literary hierarchy, Yefim rushes to the Union director's office where he learns the grim truth: fluffy tomcat. Fluffy tomcat? But Yefim's been in the Union eighteen years, he writes books about decent and fearless people, he creates no problems with Soviet censors, editors, or reviewers, he's a veteran, and he has medals. Where's the justice of it all? In his search for recourse, Yefim goes from embarrassment to scandal and ends up lionized by the foreign press as a great dissident hero.