The White Guard

Description

'The tumultuous atmospher of the Ukranian revolution and civil war is brilliantly evoked' Daily Telegraph Drawing closely on Bulgakov's personal experiences of the horrors of civil war as a young doctor, The White Guard takes place in Kiev, 1918, a time of turmoil and suffocating uncertainty as the Bolsheviks, Socialists and Germans fight for control of the city. It tells the story of the Turbins, a once-wealthy Russian family, as they are forced to come to terms with revolution and a new regime.

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. After a lifetime at odds with the stultifying Soviet regime, he died impoverished and blind in 1940, shortly after completing his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. None of his major fiction was published during his lifetime.

A powerful reverie...the city is so vivid to the eye that it is the real hero of the book. * New Statesman * One of those few emancipated Soviet writers who firmly believe-and still believe-that to create is to choose * Saturday Review * Worth reading in any language * Library Journal * The White Guard captures the tumult, madness and confusion of revolution * Independent *