Books

Brilliant stories that show the growth of a novelist’s mind, and the raw material that fed the wild surrealism of Bulgakov’s later fiction.

With the ink still wet on his diploma, the twenty-five-year-old Dr. Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of rural Russia which, in 1916-17, was still largely unaffected by such novelties as the motor car, the telephone or electric light. How his alter-ego copes (or fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone doctor in a vast country practice — on the eve of Revolution — is described in Bulgakov’s delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance.

Praise for A Young Doctor’s Notebook

‘The oil lamps of his little provincial hospital seemed to him a lonely beacon which symbolised the battle between light and darkness… These straightforward yet extraordinary sketches gain their strength from also being the account of a young man’s growth. One begins to see that he became a novelist not because he had material but because he was storing up passion and temperament’ – V.S. Pritchett, New Statesman

‘Stories as keen and bright as a scalpel… Courage shines from every angle of this profoundly human collection by the greatest of modern Russian writers.’ – Sunday Times

‘Bulgakov’s struggle with the dark Russian winter swirling outside his window symbolizes the lack of experience, loneliness, and the worry of breaking the Hippocratic oath that gnaws at the sleep of junior doctors everywhere.’ – British Medical Journal

‘One of the great classics of medical literature.’ – The Times