The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov

The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov

Review by Jem11 

Set during the Russian revolution in Kiev, the book deals with the personal experience of a group of family, friends and neighbours while the City is besieged.

In the background are real political events, including the shadowy spectre of Petliura (an actual historical figure) who menaces everyone's lives but never appears in the novel.

It's not a political book, although because of its sympathetic dealing with the White Russian (in this case Royalist) opposition it caused the writer political problems in the Soviet Union in which he lived. (I mean sympathetic in a personal human sense and not in the sense of a political sympathy, because we don't really get a sense of Bulgakov's political beliefs).

The effect of the civil war and the struggle of the characters to survive and to protect those they love is skillfully and movingly depicted, including with the use of surreal dream sequences reminding you of Bulgakov's masterpiece the Master and the Margarita