Mikhail Bulgakov / J. A. E. Curtis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Curtis, J. A. E. (Julie A. E.), author.

Series:

Critical lives (London, England)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1891-1940.

Bulgakov, Mikhail.

Authors, Russian--20th century--Biography.

Authors, Russian.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

198 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm.

Place of Publication:

London : Reaktion Books, 2017.

Summary:

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) has become the most popular Russian writer of the twentieth century, even though his works were banned for decades after his death owing to repressive censorship in the Soviet Union. J.A.E. Curtis, in her revelatory new biography, provides a fresh account of Bulgakov's idyllic childhood and youth in Kiev, which was swept away in the turmoil of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and Civil War. She then traces Bulgakov's professional life - his absolute determination to establish himself as a writer in Bolshevik Moscow, his three marriages, his triumphs as a dramatist in the 1920s and the tragic frustrations of the 1930s. Curtis's book is based upon previously unpublished family papers and Soviet Politburo discussions, and historical documents newly accessible from the USSR archives. Bulgakov's great novel, The Master and Margarita (published in 1973), was written in complete secrecy during the 1930s for fear of the writer being arrested and shot. This biography reveals how he struggled to defend his art and preserve his integrity in Soviet Russia, and the intensely close interest Stalin took in his work. Mikhail Bulgakov is an absorbing account of one of Russia's most inventive and exuberant writers. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Medicine and Literature, 1891-1921 9

2 Moscow, 1921-6 53

3 Four Plays, 1926-9 76

4 'The Years of Catastrophe', 1929-36 107

5 The Master and Margarita, 1936-40 148.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1780237413

9781780237411

OCLC:

951753713