A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel)A new translation of one of the most popular satires on the Russian Revolution and on Soviet society first time in Penguin Classics This is Bulgakov's semi autobiographical story of a writer who fails to sell his novel and fails to commit suicide. When his play is taken up by the theatre, literary success beckons, but he has reckoned without the grotesquely inflated egos of the actors, directors and theatre managers.