A Country Doctor's Notebook

Superb short stories that demonstrate the development of a novelist's imagination and provide the foundation for Bulgakov's later fiction's wild surrealism.

The 25-year-old Dr. Mikhail Bulgakov was thrust into the frigid rural Russia of 1916–17, which was yet completely untouched by such innovations as the motor car, the telephone, or the electric light. His diploma's ink was still wet. Bulgakov's fascinating blend of frank realism and imaginative exuberance describes how his alter-ego deals (or fails to deal) with the new and frequently horrific obligations of a lone doctor in a large country practise on the verge of Revolution.