Aging actress Irina visits the country estate where her brother Sorin and her son Konstantin reside. She brings her lover Boris, a successful novelist. The estate teems with desire, jealousy and angst. The estate manager's daughter Masha is in love with Konstantin, who is in love with the sweet neighbor Nina, who is in love with Boris. Boris casually uses and discards Nina while Irina continuously treats Konstantin with similar disdain. Emotions run...

Provides in-depth analysis of the life, works, career, and critical importance of Mikhail Bulgakov.

With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides--Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Turgenev, among others--Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nationƯalities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Bypassing major cities as much as possible, she goes instead to the places associated with the country's literary masters. With her, we see...