The Fatal Eggs

by Mikhail Bulgakov, Roger Cockrell (Translator)

Overview

The chickens come home to roost in this “brilliantly strange” blend of science fiction and political satire by the author of The Master and Margarita (The Guardian, UK).
 
As the new reality of post-Revolution Soviet life begins to settle in, a gifted but eccentric zoologist named Persikov invents a machine that revolutionizes the growth of living organisms by drastically increasing their size and reproductive rates.
 
Meanwhile, a mysterious plague has wiped out the entire poultry population of Russia, raising concerns about the government’s ability to feed its people. Hoping to use Persikov’s yet-untested invention to revive the decimated chicken population, the secret service confiscates Persikov’s machine—with disastrous results…
 
Inspired by H. G. Wells’s novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, this science fiction novella delighted readers in 1925 Russia—and also disapproved of by certain critics who saw the tale as an anti-Soviet satire of the events of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and of post-war leadership.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780795348372
Publisher:	RosettaBooks
Publication date:	10/01/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	97
Sales rank:	796,168
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Mikhail Bulgakov was a Russian playwright, novelist, and physician best known for his satirical classic, The Master and Margarita. Born in Kiev in 1891, Bulgakov was drawn to both literature and the theater from his early youth. As a young man, Bulgakov studied to become a doctor and volunteered with the Red Cross during the First World War. He practiced medicine for some years after WWI, and was eventually drafted as an army physician during the Russian Civil War. He contracted typhus and nearly died at his posting, and after a shaky recovery he began his professional transition from physician to playwright and author.
 
From 1919 until his death in 1940, his plays, short stories, and novels enjoyed degrees of critical and popular success, but Bulgakov also endured a great deal of criticism and censorship due to his propensity to mercilessly satirize the ethical and political shortcomings of life in the Soviet Union. His witty, biting, and frequently grotesque storytelling style caught the eye of Joseph Stalin, earning him some degree of political immunity. By the end of the 1920s, however, Bulgakov’s career had ground to a halt due to a government ban on the performance or publication of his work. Bulgakov’s relationship with Stalin protected him from arrest and execution, but he could not publish any of his works or stage his plays for the remaining years of his life.
 
Over the next decade, the ailing writer began work on The Master and Margarita, which would be his last major creative effort before his death. A brilliant satire of Soviet society, it was not published until 1966, 26 years after his death. Although he never experienced stable success and renown during his life, Bulgakov’s body of work is now firmly situated within the pantheon of great 20th century Russian literature and theater.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	vii
	Introduction	xv
	The Fatal Eggs	1
	Notes	107
	Biographical note	109