Mikhail Bulgakov eBooks

Mikhail Bulgakov was a Russian author best known for his novels and plays.

Bulgakov was born in 1891 in Kiev, and was interested in theatre from childhood. His love of literature was furthered when he joined the First Kiev Gymnasium in 1901. He went on to study medicine at St. Vladimir University, after which he worked as a physician at the Kiev Military Hospital.

During World War I, in which he served as a doctor, he was injured and, as a result, developed a morphine addiction. He would go on to detail this time of his life in his book, Morphine, which was published in 1926. His work as a doctor was also to be detailed in one of his books, Country Doctor’s Notebook.

Having worked as a doctor through the Russian Civil War and having served in the Ukrainian People’s Army, his ill health eventually put an end to his medical career. It was at this time that he took up writing full time. At first, he worked as a correspondent for several newspapers.

Bulgakov began writing fiction in the early 1920s, and his work in that era was dominated by satire, such as that in 1924’s The Fatal Eggs. He began writing plays around the same time. After a number of his plays, including Ivan Vasilievich and Don Quixote, were banned and Moliere (The Cabal of Hypocrites) was panned by Pravda, Bulgakov appealed to Stalin directly in 1929.

Through the 1930s, he would work on the Master and Margarita, which would become his most famous novel. Bulgakov continued working on it until his death in 1940, with versions published in 1966, 1967, 1973, and 1989.