Manuscripts Don't Burn - Softcover

Mikhail Bulgakov

Softcover

ISBN 10: 140883121X ISBN 13: 9781408831212

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2012

Synopsis

In his own lifetime, Russian novelist and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov was scarcely published. A quarter of a century after his death, his novel, "The Master and the Margarita", has become a worldwide bestseller. In this book, J.A.E. Curtis presents a chronicle of Bulgakov's life. She is the only Westerner to have been granted access to either his or his wife's diaries which record the nightmarish precariousness of life during the Stalinist purges. She combines this with extracts from letters to and from Bulgakov and with her own commentary. She also includes letters to Stalin, in which Bulgalov pleads to be allowed to emigrate; letters to his siblings; intimate notes to his second and third wives; and letters to and from other writers such as Gorky and Zamyatin.

About this title

About the Author

J.A.E. Curtis is a lecturer in Russian Literature at Oxford, with a focus on the works of Mikhail Bulgakov and Evgeny Zamyatin as well as Russian drama. She is the author of "Bulgakov's Last Decade: The Writer as Hero."

Review

"Superb... marvelously uncensored."--"The New York Times Book Review"

"Bulgakov's magic never fails the reader... some of the documents included are indeed astonishing... Bulgakov's life is as fantastic and tortured as the plot of "The Master and Margarita"."--"The Washington Post Book World"

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 140883121X
• ISBN 13: 9781408831212
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: J.A.E. Curtis