Manuscripts Don't Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov a Life in Letters and Diaries

Since I can't read Russian, I have to read Bulgakov's marvelous plays and novels ("Heart of a Dog", "The Master and Margarita", "Bliss") in translation. Nor did I experience, first-hand, the horrors of the Stalin purges. I love the work of Bulgakov--he's a master of satire and imagination. This biography in letters and notes is really essential for the non-Russian reader to get a sense of his history, life and work in a way that can't be conveyed in translation. It put all that I had read by Bulgakov into a far more comprehensible light.