This volume of personal writings offers an intimate view of the celebrated Russian author's life and creative process in the face of Soviet censorship.
Best known for his biting satire of Soviet society
The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov kept meticulous journals
written with keen humor and insight
about his day to day life in Moscow as well as the wider social and political life of early 20th century Russia. But his diaries stop midway through the 1920s-the Bolshevik secret police raided his apartment and confiscated his private notebooks in 1926.
After that incident
Bulgakov began chronicling his thoughts in letters. Writing mostly to friends and family
he also sent letters to literary contemporaries like Maxim Gorky and Yevgeny Zamyatin
and even to Joseph Stalin. These correspondences are both bitingly funny and full of pain
mundane and sublime.
This selection of Bulgakov's private writings provides a fascinating glimpse into a period of Russian history and literature that was alive with creative energy yet darkened by the iron grip of censorship. The Alma Classics edition of
Diaries and Selected Letters is translated by Roger Cockrell with the authorization of the Bulgakov Estate. Cockrell translation reflects the clear
humorous
and profound language of the original with colloquial English idioms and phrasings.
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