The critical companion aims to acquaint the reader with the history, biographical context, critical reception, and interpretation problems related to the novel. It also helps the first time reader decipher the text's difficult features, including its shifting narrators and fluid boundaries between dream and reality.

Essays by Andrew Barratt, William E. Harkins, Victor Peppard, and Rimgaila Salys trace the thematic, Freudian, Bakhtinian and interdisciplinary readings of the novel. The companion also includes a look at the period when the novel was written through documents ranging from proletariat machine poetry to newspaper articles. It includes excerpts of Olesha's memoirs, as well as a listing of the most important criticism of the novel.