What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

I read it a few years ago, and think it may have been published by "Shastra sahitya parishad" - a society for promoting scientific literature among children of Kerala or by publishers of Eureka magazine.

The story starts when a man is gravely injured and a genius doc/friend/scientist saves his brain and attaches to an elephant body. He looks like an elephant from outside, but is a human. The story felt very real in describing all that he has to learn to survive as an elephant in the wild and against poachers, all the while fighting to handle extra hearing and smelling powers of an elephant, and the effects of seasonal hormone changes in the body.

I found this on the Internets:
In his 1930 novel Hoiti-Toiti Alexander Belyayev writes how a scientist's brain has been transplanted in the body of an elephant.

I want to read this, so I dug deeper. It's a Russian author, so his name is spelled differently in different places.
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From Yahoo! Answers:

This is a book that I read when I was still a child, actually I can't remember much of the details. So, thanks in advance to people that help me.

The story is about a brain of a man (a scientist if I remember correctly) being transplanted into an elephant's head. So, we (the reader) are actually following a journey of a human mind in an elephant's body, as it/he travels through forest, learn to communicate with other elephants, learn to live as an elephant, learn to avoid those terrible acts of human (such as hunting, smuggling of ivory, etc).

I also remember at some point of the story, it/he has been captured and sell to a circus, where it/he was asked to perform different circus tricks to please the audiences.
2 years ago Report Abuse

Cabin Fever
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Hoity-Toity by A Belyaev (called the Russian Jules Verne)
HOITY TOITY’ – set in Berlin 1920s – circus, trick elephant, ‘genius’ with human intelligence – breaks away – isinvention of Professor Wagner – brain of German scientist named Ram – view of world through senses of elephant withhuman brain
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And from isfdb.com:

Hoiti-Toiti (1930) [SF] only appeared as:
Variant Title: Hoiti-Toiti (1930) [as by Alexander Belaiev]
Variant Title: Hoiti-Toiti (1930) [as by A. Beliaev ]
Variant Title: Hoity-Toity (1961) [as by A. Belayev ]

Thats the one. Thanks a lot. Now I need to search for a copy.
How I do mark this as resolved?

Amal, I'll move/shelve it. Thanks.

Well, somebody please include a Goodreads' book link where it appears and I can shelve it. In the meantime, I'll mark it as solved. Thanks.

Actually, everybody, should this be shelved as children and/or ya and/or adult fiction? Thanks.

Too late to reply, but its definitely under 'children'. No adult only stuff in there.

Hoity Toity is in the collection A Visitor from Outer Space by Alexander Belayev. I'll go ahead and shelve this.