Born in Kiev in 1891 to Russian parents, Mikhail Bulgakov trained as a doctor and volunteered for the Red Cross on the outbreak of the First World War. He later enlisted as a doctor for the anti-Bolshevik White Army, before eventually giving up medicine to concentrate on literature. The Master and Margarita is his most famous work, and has been hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

This is a very good place to start on Bulgakov if you haven’t read any of his work before. All his manic energy is here; and so, largely, is his talent. (...) In Notes on a Cuff you can see one of the most original voices of the 20th century starting to find itself. Congratulations to the publisher for making it available to us.

• Contains: Notes on a Cuff, The Fire of the Khans, The Crimson Island, A Week of Enlightenment, The Unusual Adventureof a Doctor, Psalm, Moonshine Lake, Makar Devushkin's Story, A Scurvy Character, The Murderer, The Cockroach, A Dissolute Man