Black Snow

When Maxudov's novel, fails, he attempts suicide. When that fails, he dramatizes his novel. To Maxudov's surprise -- and the resentment of literary Moscow -- the play is accepted by the legendary Independent Theater, and Maxudov plunges into a vortex of inflated egos. Each rehearsal, sees more and more sparks flying higher and higher ... and less and less chance of poor Maxudov's play ever being performed. Black Snow is the ultimate backstage novel, and a brilliant satire on Mikhail. Bulgakov's ten-year love-hate relationship with Stanislavsky, Method acting, and the Moscow Arts Theater.

After a lifetime spent struggling against censorship, not least in the theater, Bulgakov died in 1940, not long after completing his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. None of his major fiction was published during his lifetime.