He is amused at their fervent atheism, reminds them of the five proofs of God’s existence, claims to have breakfasted with Kant, to have shared a platform with Pontius Pilate. The two Muscovites are joined in their conversation by a stranger, a man they take to be a foreigner, from his expensive grey suit, foreign-made shoes and differently coloured eyes-right eye black, left eye green. Whereas everyone knew that all the stories about him were mere fabrications, myths of the most standard kind. Berlioz had commissioned Bezdomny to write an antireligious poem for his literary journal, but without really meaning to, the figure of Jesus Christ created by Bezdomny in the poem had turned out to be too.well, lifelike. Stravinsky and Rimsky…), chair of the prestigious writers’ association MASSOLIT, meets his younger colleague, the poet Bezdomny, at Patriarch’s Ponds in Moscow, to discuss the latter’s recent poem. These ideas are set up from the opening scene, where the editor Berlioz, (yes, several characters have the names of composers- there’s Dr. But the novel’s more general critique is that of a society with a materialist, atheist, philosophy, where the imaginative, other-worldly aspects of human experience, such as religious faith, or belief in good and evil, are outlawed. It takes place in a world peopled by petty officials and the pretentious literati, where hypocrisy and denunciation is rife in all areas of life, where citizens clamber over one another to gain a coveted apartment in Moscow or to have their names down on the list for one of those select dachas at the Writers’ Residential Colony. This most fantastical of novels, written between 19, when Bulgakov died, certainly offers a satirical take on Soviet society at that time. (Though it must be said that he wrote in Russian, lived in Moscow from 1921, and is claimed for the Russian literary canon.) It was recently recommended by writer and podcaster Octavia Bright in a Literary Friction show on satire, and of course, with beautiful Kyiv in our thoughts and hearts since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine on February 24 th this seemed like a good moment to engage with one of Kyiv’s most famous sons. This novel has been on my mind for a while now, since our visit to Kyiv in June 2019, when we walked past Mikhail Bulgakov’s house on Andriyivsky uzviz on our way down to Podil.
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