To those living in the West, the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov is known as a fiction writer, his reputation resting largely on his greatly-loved novel The Master and Margarita. During his life in the Soviet Union (1891-1940), however, Bulgakov's biggest career successes came as a playwright in the immensely influential Moscow theater. The novel Black Snow, is Bulgakov's lampoon of that entire pre-war Russian drama scene, complete with a fictional version of his nemesis, the great Stanislavsky (of method acting fame). The book is a writer's story about hapless Maxuduv, an unlucky author (not unlike Bulgakov himself) who is torn apart under the insane forces, overcooked egos, and political machinations that rumbled through the world of the theater at that time.