With the ink still wet on his diploma, the twenty-five year old Dr Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of rural Russia which, in 1916-17, was still largely unaffected by such novelties as the motor car, the telephone or electric light. How his alter-ego copes (and fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone practitioner in a vast country practice - in blizzards, pursued by wolves and on the eve of Revolution - is described in Bulgakov's delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance.