The Fatal Eggs

What begins as a miracle of science soon turns into a nightmare...

After a plague wipes out all of Russia’s chickens, eyes fall on zoologist Periskov and his strange discovery that promises to revive their population. But quickly, the state’s attempt to control nature spirals rapidly out of control, and soon all of Moscow is under siege by creatures they hadn’t bargained for. The Fatal Eggs is Mikhail Bulgakov’s savage, darkly comic tale of progress gone wrong. Blending satire with science fiction, it captures the dangers of unchecked power – and the absurdity of believing that catastrophe can be neatly managed.


BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

About the Author

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891 - 1940) was born and educated in Kiev where he graduated as a doctor in 1916, but gave up the practice of medicine in 1920 to devote himself to literature. In 1925 he completed the satirical novella The Heart of a Dog, which remained unpublished in the Soviet Union until 1987. This was one of the many defeats he was to suffer at the hands of his censors. By 1930 Bulgakov had become so frustrated by the political atmosphere and the suppression of his works that he wrote to Stalin begging to be allowed to emigrate if he was not to be given the opportunity to make his living as a writer in the USSR. Stalin telephoned him personally and offered to arrange a job for him at the Moscow Arts Theatre instead. In 1938, a year before contracting a fatal illness, he completed his prose masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. He died in 1940. In 1966-7, thanks to the persistance of his widow, the novel made a first, incomplete, appearance in Moskva, and in 1973 appeared in full.