A theatrical novelo by Michail Bulgakov, a conversation with Serena Vitale and Paolo Di Paolo, readings by Lino Guanciale and Camilla Semino Favro

Tuesday 27 April 2021 at 6 p.m.
A theatrical novel by Mikhail  Bulgakov
A conversation with Serena Vitale and Paolo Di Paolo
Readings by Lino Guanciale and Camilla Semino Favro

Desecrating and bitterly ironic, A theatrical novel is the paraphrasing of Bulgakov’s true experiences when he collaborated at the Moscow Art Theatre with  Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovič-Dančenko, the two great artistic characters from the early twentieth century in Russia. In the work, which is intended as a sort of prologue to his suicide, the lead character, Maksudov, paints an irreverent portrait of a world that he approaches with enthusiasm and by which he finds himself tragically rejected.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891-1940) was the author of a number of undisputed masterpieces of world literature, first and foremost The Master and Margherita, as well as Heart of a dog and The white guard. A novelist and playwright, Bulgakov suffered Soviet censorship his entire life. Brilliant, with a boundless imagination, he was a severe critic of the hypocrisy and conformism that characterised society at the time, and was misunderstood by his peers, only to be rediscovered and given his rightful recognition in the latter part of the twentieth century.