The White Guard

by Mikhail Bulgakov, Nicholas Boulton (Read by)

Overview

The setting is Kiev in 1918, a time of revolution, turmoil and civil war. The Germans have occupied the city, Petlyura's Socialists are camped outside awaiting their moment, while the Bolsheviks watch, contemplating their buried armaments. The once wealthy Turbin family are in anguish as their world grows smaller and smaller. Called a modern classic by C. P. Snow, this novel first appared in 1923, and was banned by Stalin in the '30s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798212711241
Publisher:	Naxos
Publication date:	09/01/2022
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mikhail
Bulgakov (1891–1940) was born in Kiev. Schooled as a doctor, he gave up the practice of medicine in 1920 to devote himself to writing. He went on to write some of the greatest novels in twentieth-century Russian literature, including White
Guard and Black Snow. Though Bulgakov’s work was often censored,
Stalin showed his personal favor by protecting him from imprisonment and finding a job for him at the Moscow Art Theatre, where the writer would work as a director and playwright for many years. He died at the age of forty-nine from a kidney disorder. His masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, would not be published until twenty-six years after his death.

Nicholas Boulton, actor and winner of nine Earphones Awards for narration, studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, winning the BBC Carleton Hobbs Award for Radio in 1993. Since then he has been heard in numerous productions for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. He has appeared in films such as Shakespeare in Love and Topsy Turvy. Theater credits include Platonov for the Almeida, Henry V for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Arcadia for the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Editorial Reviews

"...infused with a pssion for the old city and for its people that catches the reader up in its sweeping intensity....His characters have a classic universality that has kept them alive for half a century."

New York Times Book Review

"...(he) unfurls great fictional canvases conjuring up the atmosphere and beauty of his beloved Kiev (like) Pushkin...but beneath the effulgent lyricism there sounds a chunk of cynicism..Bulgakov's irony is both broad and finely honed."

Newsweek