A foray into Russian literature

After going to see Viv Groskop at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August, I read her book The Anna Karenina Fix, which was a light-hearted run through some of the Russian classics and what life lessons can be learned from them. It re-ignited my interest in Mikhail Bulgakov; he had such a difficult life due to being a writer in Stalin’s Russia. Anything that he wrote was banned by the government and he had to live in fear of being arrested, as he saw his fellow intellectuals being arrested and even executed. I read The Master and Margarita a few years ago but I didn’t fully realise how subversive it is - it wasn’t published for decades after his death. Bulgakov was desperate to travel the world and dreamed of gong to Paris but Stalin never allowed him to leave the Soviet Union and he died aged only forty-eight. I went on to read a collection of Bulgakov’s diaries and letters called Manuscripts Don’t Burn and it was really interesting. I loved the few Russian novels that I have read and I can feel myself being drawn back there.