{"title":"Mikhail Boulgakov","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"endiablade-book-mikhail-boulgakov-9782070312818","title":"Endiablade","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eDiaboliad and Other Stories, \u003c\/em\u003eMikhail Bulgakov unleashes a brilliant early vision of the absurd that would later culminate in \u003cem\u003eThe Master and Margarita.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis Abrams Press edition brings to life Bulgakov's first collection of short stories in the acclaimed, unabridged translation by Carl and Ellendea Proffer. From bureaucratic nightmares to sharp social satire, this volume includes rare 1920s newspaper sketches (feuilletons) and expert commentary not found in other editions. It is the most complete and historically accurate way to discover the origins of Bulgakov's genius.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe title novella follows Korotkov, a meek Soviet office clerk abruptly fired over a trivial mistake and plunged into a nightmarish maze of offices, documents, and doubling identities. What begins as a bureaucratic inconvenience rapidly mutates into a surreal descent, where authority is faceless, logic dissolves, and reality itself seems to conspire against the individual. Both darkly comic and deeply unsettling, Diaboliad stands as one of the sharpest literary indictments of modern bureaucracy ever written. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe accompanying stories extend Bulgakov's satire into realms of grotesque fantasy, social parody, and moral fable. Across these tales, scientists overreach, institutions collapse under their own absurdity, and ordinary people are crushed-or transformed-by systems they cannot comprehend. Drawing on traditions associated with Gogol and Dostoevsky while forging a voice unmistakably his own, Bulgakov blends realism with the bizarre, exposing how easily reason gives way to chaos in a world governed by ideology and paperwork.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten in the early 1920s, these stories provoked controversy upon publication for their unflinching portrayal of Soviet life and their refusal to offer comforting resolutions. Bulgakov's targets are not merely political structures but the deeper human cost of dehumanization: the erosion of identity, the terror of power without accountability, and the fragility of sanity under relentless pressure. Even a century later, the humor remains biting, the nightmares eerily familiar, and the insights disturbingly relevant.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEssential reading for fans of classic satire, speculative fiction, and modernist literature, \u003cem\u003eDiaboliad and Other Storie \u003c\/em\u003eoffers a vivid introduction to Bulgakov's imaginative world. These early works reveal the foundations of his later masterpieces while standing powerfully on their own-as prophetic, ferocious, and darkly entertaining explorations of what happens when systems matter more than people.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49570081308945,"sku":"GOR013687253","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/207031281X.jpg?v=1751349442"},{"product_id":"coeur-de-chien-book-mikhail-boulgakov-9782253933144","title":"Coeur de Chien","description":"I first read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita on a balcony of the Hotel Metropole in Saigon on three summer evenings in 1971. The tropical air was heavy and full of the smells of cordite and motorcycle exhaust and rotting fish and wood-fire stoves, and the horizon flared ambiguously, perhaps from heat lightning, perhaps from bombs. Later each night, as was my custom, I would wander out into the steamy back alleys of the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep, and crouch in doorways with the people and listen to the stories of their culture and their ancestors and their ongoing lives. Bulgakov taught me to hear something in those stories that I had not yet clearly heard. One could call it, in terms that would soon thereafter gain wide currency, magical realism. The deadpan mix of the fantastic and the realistic was at the heart of the Vietnamese mythos. It is at the heart of the present zeitgeist. And it was not invented by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as wonderful as his One Hundred Years of Solitude is. Garcia Marquez's landmark work of magical realism was predated by nearly three decades by Bulgakov's brilliant masterpiece of a novel. That summer in Saigon a vodka-swilling, talking black cat, a coven of beautiful naked witches, Pontius Pilate, and a whole cast of benighted writers of Stalinist Moscow and Satan himself all took up permanent residence in my creative unconscious. Their presence, perhaps more than anything else from the realm of literature, has helped shape the work I am most proud of. I'm often asked for a list of favorite authors. Here is my advice. Read Bulgakov. Look around you at the new century. He will show you things you need to see. \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49640671969553,"sku":"GOR012811073","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/2253933147.jpg?v=1751317143"},{"product_id":"le-maitre-et-marguerite-book-mikhail-boulgakov-9782221221136","title":"Le maitre et Marguerite","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49761343176977,"sku":"GOR011813204","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/2221221133.jpg?v=1751220445"},{"product_id":"maitre-et-marguerite-book-mikhail-boulgakov-9782266134378","title":"Le Maitre ET Marguerite","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49777824563473,"sku":"GOR004392501","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/226613437X.jpg?v=1751188517"},{"product_id":"roman-de-mons-de-molier-book-mikhail-boulgakov-9782070385959","title":"Roman de Mons de Molier","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52780979028241,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52780979126545,"sku":"GOR003372477","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9782070385959.jpg?v=1763991208"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-mikhail-boulgakov.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}