Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov; translation by Michael Glenny

Bulgakov is best known in the west for his surreal satire The Master and Margarita . However, early in his career he was a celebrated playwright who first achieved success by turning his novel The White Guard into the play The Days of the Turbins . Black Snow, written in the late 1930s but first published in 1967, is a delectable comedy revisiting this era, and sees him settling scores with the acting impresario Stanislavski for mutilating his work on stage. As such, it's a book for writers everywhere. A reporter on the Shipping Gazette , Maxudov (Bulgakov in disguise) has written a truly terrible novel – "Every night I lay staring into the hellish darkness and repeating: 'it's terrible'." After contemplating suicide he is saved by the editor of a literary journal, and the work is then picked up by the legendary Independent Theatre. Suddenly Maxudov has a new career as a playwright. Thrust into the world of face paint and egomania, Maxudov chronicles his experiences with a deadly eye for the absurd. There are set pieces galore, including a description of the theatre's provincial art display: portraits of Shakespeare and Molière juxtaposed with the theatre's chief lighting technician and head seamstress. Maxudov's lethal treatment at the hands of the small-town literary elite is exquisitely done ,and there is a riotous depiction of the jam-eating phony Ivan Vasilievich (Stanislavski). One of the last books Bulgakov wrote, Black Snow explores the big problem he was facing at the time: censorship. While Maxudov had the luxury of lashing out, Bulgakov didn't, and he died without seeing his masterpieces published – this personal tragedy fuelling his devastating comedy.