The Master and Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov wasn’t all that bothered about the future, even on his deathbed. The last photos of him, taken in his Moscow apartment in February 1940, show no trace of fear. Although his face is gaunt and his once luxurious hair thinning and unkempt, he looks sanguine, almost cheerful – a stark contrast with his third wife, Yelena, sitting by his side. Right up until a month before his death he was still making corrections to The Master and Margarita – his most famous novel – even though he must have known that it had no chance of being published in his lifetime. Despite a litany of failures in recent years, he was consumed by an insatiable longing to write, to create for the hereafter. But the past – that bothered him.