In Russian literature, there are writers who control their destiny and those who are controlled by it. Mikhail Bulgakov belongs to the latter group. His entire existence was a continuous, meaningful battle, doomed to failure in life and to a brilliant victory in literature in the duel with Fate. What needs to be done to a person, what gifts should be bestowed upon him, through what ascents and descents, temptations, trials, and seductions should one lead him, how to weave the plot of his life, what friends, foes, and remarkable women should be granted to him so that he writes "The White Guard," "Heart of a Dog," "Theatrical Novel," "Running," "The Cabal of the Saints," and "The Master and Margarita"? Prose writer, Doctor of Philological Sciences, laureate of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Literary Prize, as well as the "Anti-Booker," "Big Book," and others, author of biographies of M. M. Prishvin, A. S. Green, and A. N. Tolstoy Alexey Varlamov offers his version of the fate of a writer whose books have evoked admiration, outrage, fierce debates, love, and doubt for many decades, but leave few indifferent and enjoy undeniable, lasting success worldwide.
