Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Acceptable
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Ex-library with usual markings
Behind the glittering curtain of Moscow's theatrical world lies a labyrinth of vanity, bureaucracy, and creative desperation — and it is into this world that Sergei Leontievich Maksudov, a struggling writer, stumbles when his novel is adapted for the stage. Black Snow: AEtical Novel chronicles Maksudov's increasingly absurd and maddening encounters with the all-powerful director Ivan Vasilievich and the chaotic machinery of a celebrated theatre company, painting a portrait of Soviet artistic life that is simultaneously hilarious and harrowing. Written as a roman à clef, the novel draws unmistakably from Bulgakov's own tormented years working with the Moscow Art Theatre under the legendary Konstantin Stanislavski, lending the narrative an authenticity that cuts like a blade beneath its satirical surface. A masterwork of bitter wit and sharp observation, Black Snow stands as one of the great unfinished novels of the 20th century, left incomplete at Bulgakov's death in 1940 and published posthumously. The author's signature style — blending the grotesque with the achingly human — transforms what might have been a simple comedy of theatrical manners into a profound meditation on artistic integrity, the crushing weight of institutional power, and the cost of the creative soul. Readers who thought they knew Bulgakov from The Master and Margarita will find here an equally devastating, darkly comic vision that raises one haunting question: can true art survive the machinery built to produce it?
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov
Format: Hardback
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Acceptable
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Ex-library with usual markings
Behind the glittering curtain of Moscow's theatrical world lies a labyrinth of vanity, bureaucracy, and creative desperation — and it is into this world that Sergei Leontievich Maksudov, a struggling writer, stumbles when his novel is adapted for the stage. Black Snow: AEtical Novel chronicles Maksudov's increasingly absurd and maddening encounters with the all-powerful director Ivan Vasilievich and the chaotic machinery of a celebrated theatre company, painting a portrait of Soviet artistic life that is simultaneously hilarious and harrowing. Written as a roman à clef, the novel draws unmistakably from Bulgakov's own tormented years working with the Moscow Art Theatre under the legendary Konstantin Stanislavski, lending the narrative an authenticity that cuts like a blade beneath its satirical surface. A masterwork of bitter wit and sharp observation, Black Snow stands as one of the great unfinished novels of the 20th century, left incomplete at Bulgakov's death in 1940 and published posthumously. The author's signature style — blending the grotesque with the achingly human — transforms what might have been a simple comedy of theatrical manners into a profound meditation on artistic integrity, the crushing weight of institutional power, and the cost of the creative soul. Readers who thought they knew Bulgakov from The Master and Margarita will find here an equally devastating, darkly comic vision that raises one haunting question: can true art survive the machinery built to produce it?