Written in the late 1930s and left unfinished at Bulgakov’s death, Black Snow is one of literature’s most venomous accounts of what happens when a writer hands their work over to an institution. Bulgakov’s target was barely disguised: the novel draws heavily on his own notoriously difficult relationship with Konstantin Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre.

Its narrator, the hapless Sergei Maksudov, writes a novel, despairs of publishing it, and is then drawn into the orbit of Moscow’s Independent Theatre, where his manuscript is converted into a play and gradually subjected to the egos, rituals, rivalries and a completely deranged internal logic of this imagined theatrical production. 

Bulgakov is very good on institutions as closed worlds. In his works everyone understands rules that nobody can explain, authority becomes theatre in its own right, and artistic work survives mostly by accident. The comedy has the anxious, bureaucratic unreality familiar from The Master and Margarita, but here trained specifically on authorship, adaptation and cultural gatekeeping. A sharp companion piece to Bulgakov’s better-known fiction, particularly good for anyone interested in the indignities suffered by art once committees get involved.

Vintage, 2005. Paperback. Light general shelf wear, with rubbing and some creasing to the covers, particularly around the lower front corner and edges. Binding sound and pages clean overall.