Mikhail Bulgakov Books in Order

Zoologist Persikov discovers a ray that accelerates growth and reproduction just as a plague devastates Russia’s chickens. The state seizes his invention to restore poultry production, but a disastrous mistake unleashes a threat far beyond the laboratory.

Drawing on Bulgakov’s medical experiences, these stories follow a newly qualified doctor in remote Russian countryside before the Revolution. Difficult cases and overwhelming responsibility mix candid accounts of rural medicine with anxiety, humor, and youthful uncertainty.

A doctor’s experiment gives a stray dog human organs, transforming it into an unruly man. The creature’s disruptive behavior turns a scientific triumph into a grotesque satire of Soviet society, official ambition, and attempts to remake human nature.

After clerk Korotkov loses his job over a trivial mistake, his attempts to seek justice descend into a bewildering bureaucratic nightmare. Three accompanying stories explore the absurdity, violence, and confusion of life in revolutionary Russia.

Six plays portray civil war refugees, ambitious schemers, artists under pressure, and people confronting political upheaval. From The White Guard and Flight to Molière and The Last Days, the collection explores how private lives collide with authority.

The Turbin family struggles to preserve its home and values in Kiev during the upheavals of 1918. Civil war dissolves familiar loyalties and institutions, bringing political chaos into an intimate story of siblings, friends, and survival.

Bulgakov recreates the life of French playwright Molière in a narrative that blends biography with novelistic detail. His portrait follows artistic struggle and dedication while bringing the theatrical and social world of seventeenth-century France to life.

A young writer tries to begin his literary career amid civil war, hunger, illness, and political suspicion. These autobiographical sketches and accompanying stories follow his struggles with survival and the bewildering bureaucracy of Moscow’s cultural institutions.

A failed novelist survives a suicide attempt and sees his work adapted for the stage. Entering the theatrical world brings a new set of absurd obstacles, exposing artistic rivalry and bureaucracy through a partly autobiographical satire.

The devil’s arrival disrupts Soviet Moscow, drawing a persecuted writer and his devoted lover into extraordinary events. Their story intertwines with ancient Jerusalem in a satirical novel about power, belief, artistic freedom, and enduring love.

Failed novelist Maxudov’s work is chosen for production at the prestigious Independent Theatre. Feuding directors, quarrelsome actors, and the playwright’s insecurities turn rehearsals into chaos in Bulgakov’s comic portrait of the Soviet literary and theatrical establishment.

Five plays follow families, refugees, performers, and schemers confronting the upheavals of revolutionary Russia and the demands of political authority. The collection brings together The Days of the Turbins, Zoya’s Apartment, Flight, The Crimson Island, and The Cabal of Hypocrites.

Flight follows White Russian refugees wrestling with guilt, exile, and survival after civil war. In Bliss, an inventor’s time machine entangles its passengers with Ivan the Terrible and a distant future, turning scientific ambition into bureaucratic chaos.

Selections from Bulgakov’s correspondence and diary, alongside his wife Elena’s diary, document his life through personal records. The collection brings the writer’s experiences and relationships into view through accounts preserved by the couple themselves.

Five later plays place scientific inventions, historical figures, and political ambitions under satirical scrutiny. Adam and Eve, Bliss, Ivan Vasilievich, Last Days, and Batum explore the collision between individual lives and the forces of power.

Bulgakov’s letters and diary entries, with material from his wife Yelena, illuminate his private life and literary career. The selection records the pressures faced by an artist under Soviet rule during a turbulent period of Russian history.

Bulgakov’s plays about Molière and Don Quixote examine the pressures placed on imagination and independence. Their artists and idealists confront hostile political forces, exposing the tensions between personal conviction, public authority, and the freedom to create.