Rating: 
Summary: I liked this book a lot too
Review: This is a tight and powerful novel. It is more or less unique in Russian literature in that it is the story of a "typical" (i.e. non-socialist) family affected by the Revolution and Civil War. Bulgakov grew up in Kiev and his love for the city comes through very strongly. When I read this book I knew very little about the historical events it describes but this didn't prove much of a problem in the long run.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book!!
Review: What i loved most about it (i'm Russian myself) was the poetry with which Bulgakov infused every line of the novel. The language seems to give it a certain timeless quality, and at times a heartwrenching beauty..
I just looked at the excerpt from this translation and it seems to be pretty good. I'd recommend the edition to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning novel about a world coming apart forever
Review: While we are, as Americans, familiar with the story of the Stalinist purges and know something of post-Revolutionary Russian history, the Russian Civil War between the White and the Red is not as well-known.But this is the crux of the struggle that subsequently determined Russian history. Many authors tried to give a view of that turbulent period; Pasternak in "Doctor Zhivago", Solzhenitzen marginally in "Ivan Denisovitch" (Denisovitch was in a gulag because he was a returnee from the German front and thus viewed as a political traitor) and Ayn Rand "We the Living." Bulgakov's novel is one of the richest, most touching and well-written I have read on this historical time. He takes the story from the personal standpoint of a single family affected by the German betrayal of Russia to the incomprehensible brutality of the Civil War. The use of "white" and "red" as symbols in describing everyday objects and landscape is novelistic, the action is pure stage drama as you'd find in a play or film. This is a far better novel than "Doctor Zhivago", which dealt with essentially the same subject (families torn apart by the Civil War and their way of life forever altered.) If you are at all interested in Russian history, I can't recommend "The White Guard" enough to you. I just loved it.
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