Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #246548 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-19
• Released on: 2003-02-19
• Original language: Russian
• Binding: Paperback
• 162 pages

Review
"These straighforward 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

From the Back Cover
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 (and fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone practitioner in a vast country practice - in blizzards, pursued by wolves and on the eve of Revolution - is described in Bulgakov's delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance.

'Bulgakov's accounts of his triumphs and failures in A Country Doctor's Notebook are as humorous as they are compassionate.' Yorkshire Post

About the Author
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV (1891-1940) was born and educated in Kiev where he graduated as a doctor in 1916. He rapidly abandoned medicine to write some of the greatest Russian literature of this century. He died impoverished and blind in 1940 shortly after completing his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita.

Customer Reviews

A Country Doctor's Notebook
Excellent book, well written, wonderful and accurate medical imagery, and as a medical student completely captures the terror of being completely responsible for patients as a newly graduated physician.

Emotional and moving
These are the true stories of Mikhail Bulgakov, author of the Master and Margarita from the two years he spent as a medical intern in rural Russia. He vividly describes the loneliness and hardships of life in rural Russia, as well as resistence of the peasants to modern medical knowledge. He shows his inexperience, rudeness, and medical mistakes even more graphically, making one cringe for those under his knife or care. The best story, Morphine, recounts a descent into morphine addiction by the addict himself. This is emotional and moving, attributes that are missing from the tales Bulgakov tells himself. He seems to be fixated on his own suffering and his own value as a doctor and a human and doesn't show much sympathy for his patients or his fellow rural residents.