The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891. He studied and practised medicine but gave up his medical career to become a writer of short stories, plays and novels. His combination of humour and satire gained him a popular following, but his work also attracted the attention of the Soviet authorities and by 1930 his writing was essentially banned from publication. He went on to write two of his greatest works during this time: Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel (1967), and The Master and Margarita (1966–7; Folio Society 2010), both of which were finally published long after his death in 1940.
Born in London in 1959, Orlando Figes studied at the University of Cambridge and went on to become a lecturer in history and Fellow at Trinity College for 15 years. Figes has written a number of books about Russian history, including A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 (1996; Folio Society 2013), which won The Wolfson Prize, the WH Smith Literary Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His most recent book is The Europeans (2019).