Ivan Matveich was thinking it was a bad idea to see a live crocodile on the street as it swallowed him whole! Why couldn't it have eaten his wife Elena instead? What follows is an immensely humorous and satirical account of Ivan's new life from inside the crocodile, unable to get out because the owner refuses to kill the beast. A precursor to Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', Dostoevsky's short story is a farcical depiction and social criticism of Russian society at the time. The situation becomes a scene from the theatre of the absurd, making the tale a poignant finger wagging at the problems of humanity.