Molière, or The Cabal of Hypocrites and Don Quixote: Two Plays by Mikhail Bulgakov (TCG Classic Russian Drama Series)

“Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English.” – James Wood, New Yorker

 

Best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov had a knack for political allegory. Both Molière, or the Cabal of Hypocrites and Don Quixote were contentious in their time, written as a challenge to Soviet politics of the early twentieth century, especially Stalin’s harsh regime. Charged with cultural subtext and controversial intrigue, the plays in this exceptional new volume from TCG’s Russian Drama Series are given new light by the foremost translators of Russian classic literature, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in collaboration with renowned playwright Richard Nelson.

 

Richard Nelson’s many plays include The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country (That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, Sorry, Regular Singing); The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family (Hungry, What Did You Expect?, Women of a Certain Age); Nikolai and the Others; Goodnight Children Everywhere (Oliver Award for Best Play); Franny’s Way; Some Americans Abroad; Frank’s Home; Two Shakespearean Actors and James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey; Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical).

 

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated the works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Boris Pasternak, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their translations of The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina won the PEN Translation Prize in 1991 and 2002 respectively. Pevear, a native of Boston, and Volokhonsky, of St. Petersburg, are married and live in France.