About the Author

MIKHAIL BULGAKOV (1891–1940) was born and educated in Kiev, Ukraine, where he graduated as a doctor in 1916. He 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.

ORLANDO FIGES is the author of many acclaimed books on Russian history, including A People’s Tragedy, Natasha’s Dance, The Whisperers, The Crimean War, Revolutionary Russia, and The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages. Before his retirement he was a professor of history at London University.