Manuscripts Don T Burn

A volume of the renowned Russian author’s letters and diary entries: “an evocative chronicle of [his] life, beginning with the 1917 revolution” (The Guardian, UK). Mikhail Bulgakov was one of the most important literary voices of Soviet Russia. Yet his books were banned in his own country and his greatest novel, The Master and Margarita, was only published more than twenty years after his death. In Manuscripts Don't Burn—the title, a line from his famous novel—J.A. E. Curtis presents a gripping and intimate chronicle of Bulgakov's life, drawn from his own personal writings. Among other documents, Curtis draws on a partial copy of one of Bulgakov’s diaries which was presumed lost until it was uncovered in the KGB’s archives. That diary and those of the author’s third wife record the nightmarish precariousness of life during the Stalinist purges. Also included are letters to Stalin, in which Bulgakov pleads to be allowed to emigrate; letters to his siblings; intimate notes to his second and third wives; and letters to and from other writers such as Gorky and Zamyatin.

Satan comes to Soviet Moscow in this critically acclaimed translation of one of the most important and best-loved modern classics in world literature. The Master and Margarita has been captivating readers around the world ever since its first publication in 1967. Written during Stalin’s time in power but suppressed in the Soviet Union for decades, Bulgakov’s masterpiece is an ironic parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil, and on human frailty and the strength of love. In The Master and Margarita, the Devil himself pays a visit to Soviet Moscow. Accompanied by a retinue that includes the fast-talking, vodka-drinking, giant tomcat Behemoth, he sets about creating a whirlwind of chaos that soon involves the beautiful Margarita and her beloved, a distraught writer known only as the Master, and even Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate. The Master and Margarita combines fable, fantasy, political satire, and slapstick comedy to create a wildly entertaining and unforgettable tale that is commonly considered the greatest novel to come out of the Soviet Union. It appears in this edition in a translation by Mirra Ginsburg that was judged “brilliant” by Publishers Weekly. Praise for The Master and Margarita “A wild surrealistic romp. . . . Brilliantly flamboyant and outrageous.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The Detroit News “Fine, funny, imaginative. . . . The Master and Margarita stands squarely in the great Gogolesque tradition of satiric narrative.” —Saul Maloff, Newsweek “A rich, funny, moving and bitter novel. . . . Vast and boisterous entertainment.” —The New York Times “The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative and poignant. . . . A great work.” —Chicago Tribune “Funny, devilish, brilliant satire. . . . It’s literature of the highest order and . . . it will deliver a full measure of enjoyment and enlightenment.” —Publishers Weekly

Drawing on recently de-classified material, the contributors strip away the propaganda and preconceptions of the past to present an absorbing account of the rise and fall of a superpower from the 14th century to the 1990s.

_______________ 'Curtis spent a decade trying to negotiate her way past possessive Soviet archivists, and the result of her persistence is the most comprehensive selection of personal documents so far available in any language' - Simon Franklin, Times Literary Supplement 'Ingeniously structured ... an absorbing and, at times, uplifting book' - Robert Russell, Modern Language Review 'An engaging and readable story of a life which wears its scholarship lightly ... Rich and exciting material' - Jane Grayson, Slavonic and East European Review 'Produces a lovely collage effect, the verbal equivalent of the photo album or scrapbook' - Laura D. Weeks, Russian Review _______________ A reissued edition of the definitive biography of Mikhail Bulgakov, author of The Master and Margarita The Russian playwright and novelist Mikhail Bulgakov (1891 - 1940) is now widely acknowledged as one of the giants of twentieth-century Soviet literature, ranking with such luminaries as Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn. In his own lifetime, however, a casualty of Stalinist repression, he was scarcely published at all, and his plays reached the stage only with huge difficulty. His greatest masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, a novel written in the 1930s in complete secrecy, largely at night, did not appear in print until more than a quarter of a century after his death. It has since become a worldwide bestseller. In Manuscripts Don't Burn, J.A.E. Curtis has collated the fruits of eleven years of research to produce a fascinating chronicle of Bulgakov's life, using a mass of exciting new material - much of which has never been published before. In particular, she is the only Westerner to have been granted access to either Bulgakov's or his wife Yelena Sergeyevna's diaries, which record in vivid detail the nightmarish precariousness of life during the Stalinist purges. J.A.E Curtis combines these diaries with extracts from letters to and from Bulgakov and with her own illuminating commentary to create a lively and highly readable account. Her vast collection of Bulgakov's correspondence is unparalleled even in the USSR, and she draws on it judiciously to include letters addressed directly to Stalin, in which Bulgakov's pleads to be allowed to emigrate; letters to his sisters and to his brother in Paris whom he did not see for twenty years; intimate notes to his second and third wives; and letters to and from well-known writers such as Gorky and Zamyatin. Manuscripts Don't Burn provides a forceful and compelling insight into the pressures of day-to-day existence for a man fighting persecution in order to make a career as a writer in Stalinist Russia.

This volume considers the Russian writer Bulgakov's work, The master and Margarita. It opens with the editor's general introduction, discussing the work in the context of the writer's oeuvre as well as its place within the Russian literary tradition. The introductory section also includes considerations of existing translations and of textual problems in the original Russian. The following sections contain several wide-ranging articles by other scholars, primary sources and background material such as letters, memoirs, early reviews and maps.

This book sprang from three handwritten lines by Ivan Bunin, Russia’s first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Found inside a first edition of Mitya’s Love, they led to the discovery of one of the largest corpora of letters written to Ivan and Vera Bunin by two people whose lives and legacy had been, until now, forgotten. These letters are now in the Russian Archive in Leeds (RAL), and are published here for the first time. The book also focuses on memory and history in its purest form, as narrated by witnesses who lived through the most tragic century in Russian history. Their stories involve Grand Dukes, Russian literary and political giants, as well as one of the architects of the Gulag, and show how these lives intertwined. It also sheds new light on the life and works of Chekhov, Gorky, A. Tolstoy, and Bunin.