Mikhail Bulgakov

Hugh Aplin

An inspired work of science fiction and a biting political allegory, Bulgakov'sThe Fatal Eggstells of a brilliant scientist whose experiments with life spiral terribly—and fatefully—out of control. Quite by chance, Professor Persikov discovers a new form of light ray whose effect, when directed at living cells, is to accelerate growth in primitive organisms. But when this ray is shone on the wrong batch of eggs, the Professor finds himself both the unwilling creator of giant hybrids and the focus of a merciless press campaign. For it seems the propaganda machine has turned its gaze upon him, distorting his nature in the very way his “innocent” tampering created the monster snakes and crocodiles that now terrorize the neighborhood. Russian novelist and dramatist Mikhail Bulgakov is one of the foremost satirists of the 20th century.

The Fatal Eggs

Russia's literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman - a professor of black magic - arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil himself, come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of a disbelieving capital. But the Devil's mission quickly becomes entangled with the fate of the Master - a man who has turned his back on his former life and taken refuge in a lunatic asylum - and his past lover, Margarita.Both a satirical romp and a daring analysis of the nature of good and evil, innocence and guilt, The Master and Margarita is the crowning achievement of one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century.

The Master and Margarita

Anna Starobinet͡s

Seven-year-old Maxim lives with his mother and identical twin sister in Moscow's Yasenevo district. Though he is perturbed by his parents' divorce, nothing could prepare his family for the young boy's transformation as he enters adolescence. His increasingly horrifying physical shape, strange behaviour at school, refusal to wash and hoarding of houseflies are just some of the developments that alarm his now-alienated mother and sister. Only when his diary is discovered does the sinister and wholly unexpected truth behind his metamorphosis from boy to monster come to light. The characters in this and the other stories in Anna Starobinets' acclaimed first collection inhabit a disturbing modern Russia. Drawing the reader in to an eerie world, Starobinets blurs the boundaries between the real and the imagined, filtering sinister occurrences through the narratives of unstable minds. Her unsettling imaginative territory and the simplicity of her prose have drawn comparisons of Starobinets' work with that of authors as varied as Kafka and Stephen King. An Awkward Age is a haunting and beautiful evocation of a society entering a new phase of its history, and an example of contemporary fiction at its finest.

An Awkward Age

Leo Tolstoy

Death of Ivan Ilyich

Антон Павлович Чехов

Roger Cockrell

Three Years

Ivan Sergejevič Turgenev

A lesser-known novella by one of the great masters of Russian literature, now available to English readers in a lucid translation, is presented with "Yakov Pasynkov," another story exploring the nature of love and human relations In a series of nine letters, the narrator tells his friend how he introduced Vera Nikolayevna, a married woman who had been forbidden as a child to read fiction and poetry, to the intellectual pleasures of Goethe's masterpiece. Opening up in front of Vera's eyes is not only the realm of imagination, but also a world of unbridled feelings and tempestuous passions, which can only shatter the comfort and safety of her existence and force her to set off on a journey of spiritual awakening.

Faust

One of the most exquisitely constructed novellas by the author of War and Peace is presented alongside The Devil, a further work exploring the powerful and destructive nature of obsession The judge Ivan Ilyich Golovin has spent his life in the pursuit of wealth and status, devoting himself obsessively to work and often neglecting his family in the process. When, after a small accident, he fails to make the expected recovery, it gradually becomes clear that he is soon to die. Ivan Ilyich then starts to question the futility and barrenness of his previous existence, realizing to his horror, as he grapples with the meaning of life and death, that he is totally alone.

Hugh Aplin

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