This is Bulgakov's semi-autobiographical story of a writer who fails to sell his novel and fails to commit suicide. When his play is taken up by the theatre, literary success beckons, but he has reckoned without the grotesquely inflated egos of the actors, directors and theatre managers.

Author Biography

Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov was born in 1891 in Kiev, today the capital of Ukraine. His father was a professor at the Theological Academy. After finishing high school, Bulgakov entered the Medical School of Kiev University, graduating in 1916. In 1913 he married Tatyana Lappa, who moved with him after graduation to provincial villages, where he practiced medicine. He wrote about his experiences as a doctor in his early works Notes on Cuffs and Notes of a Young Country Doctor. Andrew Bromfield is a regular translator from the Russian, and has translated works by Boris Akunin, Vladimir Voinovich and Irina Denezhkina, as well as titles by Victor Pelevin. Keith Gessen is a contributing editor at New York magazine. He is also co-editor of n+1, a new journal of literature and politics.