The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never!
You’re asked an unexpected question, you don’t even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away.
But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question,
and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost.

Mikhail Bulgakov,
The Master and Margarita

Anna Karenina: An Excerpt

A footman stood opening the carriage door. The hall porter stood holding open the great door of the house. Anna Arkadyevna, with her quick little hand, was unfastening the lace of her sleeve, caught in the hook of her fur cloak, and with bent head listening to the words Vronsky murmured as he escorted her…

Read More

A Dog’s Heart – An Excerpt

With Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov has enchanted this reader’s mind, eternally. The deities and devils both, must have been on his side, when he created Master and Margarita, for the kind of masterpiece it is. Soon after M&M, I had a plan to reach out to his other novels and A Dog’s Heart was…

Read More

Dr. Zhivago – An Excerpt

What I have come to like best in the whole of Russian literature is the childlike Russian quality of Pushkin and Chekhov, their modest reticence in such high-sounding matters as the ultimate purpose of mankind or their own salvation. It isn’t that they didn’t think about these things, and to good effect, but to talk…

Read More