A Country Doctor's Notebook

Fantastic short read. Bulgakov is a bright, ambitious young doctor assigned to a small outpost in rural Western Russia where, even by 1915 or so, electricity has not proliferated. In a series of vignettes Bulgakov paints a portrait of life in rural pre-revolution Russia. His peasant patients, usually illiterate, often carry superstitions that interfere with treatment and spread rumors when procedures go poorly, are out of a previous century and in the cast of characters around Bulgakov, one can see the material circumstances that allowed for the revolution.

The stories are funny, gripping, frightening, sad, and witty. Bulgakov comes of age as a young doctor and his conception of adulthood and his understanding of the rules of the institutions he works within (be they medicine, the village social politics, the Russian Empire etc.) matures considerably as he becomes wiser, more jaded, but importantly more empathetic by the end of the book.

solid 4.5. time to get back to russian lit.