Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Mikhail and Margarita
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Marblehead
STATE: MA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.europaeditions.com/author/204/julie-lekstrom-himes * http://www.npr.org/2017/03/19/520708146/authoring-an-authors-life-in-mikhail-and-margarita
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and doctor.
AWARDS:Editor’s Choice Award, 2008, The Florida Review.
WRITINGS
Works have been published in Shenandoah, Florida Review, and Fourteen Hills.
SIDELIGHTS
Julie Lekstrom Himes is a writer and doctor. Her short fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Florida Review, and Fourteen Hills. Her work won the Editor’s Choice Award in The Florida Review in 2008 and was nominated for Best American Mysteries in Fourteen Hills in 2011.
Himes lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Mikhail and Margarita is a fictional imagining of the life of Russian author and physician Mikhail Bulgakov. Bulgakov is the author of The Master and Margarita, one of the most popular Russian novels ever written. The book was written in the 1930s, though was then been banned for many years under Stalin’s regime. It was hidden for twenty-five years by Bulgakov’s wife until the 1960s, when it was safe to be published without persecution.
Himes’ imagining of Bulgakov’s life begins in 1933, in the midst of famine in Soviet Russia. Bulgakov is struggling financially due to the censorship of Stalin’s governing system. Oddly, Stalin is a fan of Bulgakov’s work, as long as it does not undermine his political ideology. This connection allows Bulgakov to court the Soviet political elite.
While this is happening, Bulgakov has befriended Margarita, the mistress of his friend Osip Mandelstam, a real-life Russian intellectual. When Mandelstam is imprisoned for his political views, specifically for an unpublished poem he has written about Stalin, Bulgakov is chosen by the The Writers’ Union to pen a letter to plead for the poet’s release. While working on the letter, Bulgakov grows close with Margarita. As their friendship develops into a romance, Ilya Ivanovich, a member of the secret police, begins shadowing them, suspicious of both due to their association with Mandelstam.
As Ilya interrogates Margarita, he, too, begins developing feelings for her. Ultimately Margarita is condemned to be sent to a prison camp in Siberia. Unwilling to lose his love and muse, Bulgakov follows Margarita to Siberia. Ilya does the same, and the three characters find themselves in the barren lands of Siberia. The story includes prison, labor camps, torture, and an escape attempt.
The narration of the story shifts between Bulgakov’s and Margarita’s points of view throughout the book. While a contributor at Kirkus Reviews noted, “neither perspective is convincing, and the characters aren’t exactly lifelike,” Joshua Finnell in Library Journal wrote: “Himes pens a whirlwind tale of romance and intrigue that approximates, if not exceeds, the talents of one of Russia’s most heralded authors.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2017, review of Mikhail and Margarita.
Library Journal, February 1, 2017, Joshua Finnell, review of Mikhail and Margarita, p. 70.
New Yorker, May 22, 2017, Laura Kolbe, “Briefly Noted,” p. 84.
Publishers Weekly, January 30, 2017, review of Mikhail and Margarita, p. 172.*
Authoring An Author's Life In 'Mikhail and Margarita'
Listen· 3:57
Toggle more options
March 19, 20177:52 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday
Julie Lekstrom Himes talks about her novel Mikhail and Margarita. It is a fictional account of the life of Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov, who wrote the classic The Master and Margarita.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
"The Master And Margarita" is one of the most popular novels in Russia - even today. It was written during the 1930s by author and physician Mikhail Bulgakov, though, for many years, Stalin's police state prevented its publication. Now Julie Lekstrom Himes, herself a doctor, pays homage to Bulgakov by imagining his life in her new novel, "Mikhail And Margarita."
(SOUNDBITE OF IGOR STRAVINSKY AND ANATOLY SHELUDYAKOV'S "LES CINQ DOIGHTS: MODERATO")
JULIE LEKSTROM HIMES: "The Master And Margarita" is a wonderful book that I was introduced to by my father-in-law. He was a physicist for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and traveling to then-the Soviet Union frequently. He brought back the book, handed it to me and said, the Russians call him the Russian Garcia Marquez. And so I thought, well, that's a wonderful introduction.
And I read the book and fell in love with it but became even more interested when I read the background of Mikhail Bulgakov and the censorship that he suffered while he was writing in Moscow and the history behind the book and how it was hidden for 25 years by his wife until it was safe to be published in the late '60s.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAYMOND CLARKE'S "LES 5 DOIGTS: III. ALLEGRETTO")
HIMES: I went on to read more about Bulgakov, more of his work, the "Country Doctor's Notebook," which I think really drew me to him and his voice. As a physician, he wrote this series of short stories about his early years working in rural Russia, just freshly minted from medical school. And reading these very honest stories, all written in the first-person point of view, brought back my days as a medical student. They could have been my journals. Just - and it really made his voice resound in my head so that I felt - I had the nerve to do this, to write this novel.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAYMOND CLARKE'S "LES 5 DOIGTS: III. ALLEGRETTO")
HIMES: I spent almost a year researching this history before beginning to write my novel. My other experience, I think, that helped in the writing is that when I was a young adult, I visited the Soviet Union with my parents and my sister and had some interesting experiences.
We had just arrived in Leningrad, and so we decided to take a walk. And these two young men approached my father out of the blue and asked him, in broken English, if he wouldn't mind selling them his trousers. He declined (laughter). He kept his pants on.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAYMOND CLARKE'S "LES 5 DOIGTS: IV. LARGHETTO")
HIMES: It is interesting and certainly should be a cautionary tale to us moving forward, the changes that have taken place in Russia since Putin came to power in 2000. Essentially, when he came to power as president, the media, the comedians felt free to make jokes about him, particularly the fact that he was a former KGB agent, and here he is now their president. But that has changed dramatically, of course.
And a number of laws have been put into place - again, something we should look upon in a cautionary way - laws that are, on the surface, supposed to protect the people and protect them from extremist thinking, protect the children from things that would harm their growth and health and protect those who are religious believers from having their feelings hurt. And these laws have effectively evoked censorship once again and not just overt but as - in addition to that, and something that was quite common at the time I wrote about in this novel, self-censorship. One of the things I learned during my research is that poets of the time in the 1920s and '30s and '40s would often get together and read to each other their poetry. And once they read it, they would burn it in a silver dish, and all of that is gone now.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Julie Lekstrom Himes, her new novel about the life of Mikhail Bulgakov is called "Mikhail And Margarita."
JULIE LEKSTROM HIMES
Julie Lekstrom Himes' short fiction has been published in Shenandoah, The Florida Review (Editor's Choice Award 2008), Fourteen Hills (nominated for Best American Mysteries 2011), and elsewhere. Mikhail and Margarita is her debut novel. She lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Briefly Noted
Laura Kolbe
The New Yorker. 93.14 (May 22, 2017): p84.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Conde Nast Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
http://www.newyorker.com/
Listen
Full Text:
Briefly Noted
[...]
Mikhail and Margarita, by Julie Lekstrom Himes (Europa). Blacklisted by the Soviet authorities, Mikhail Bulgakov, the great Russian satirist, spent much of the nineteen-thirties unpublished and living in penury. This richly imagined retelling of those lean years-which gave rise to his phantasmagoric novel "The Master and Margarita"-mixes fact and fiction to create a narrative that is both foreign and familiar. Readers acquainted with Bulgakov's work will recognize the memorable tropes: a burning manuscript, a delirium tremens diagnosis, linden trees at Patriarch's Ponds. Yet the novel is not a tribute but a complex and original work, written in a style that is the polar opposite of Bulgakov's antic magic realism.
Himes, Julie Lekstrom: MIKHAIL AND
MARGARITA
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Himes, Julie Lekstrom MIKHAIL AND MARGARITA Europa Editions (Adult Fiction) $18.00 3, 14 ISBN: 978-160-
945-375-6
An imagined relationship between a great Russian writer and the inspiration for one of his characters.Mikhail
Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita famously imagines a visit to Moscow by Satan. Written during Stalin's reign, the
novel wasn't published until 1966, a quarter century after its author's death. In her debut novel, Himes attempts to
resurrect the brilliant Bulgakov and to give shape to his fictional Margarita. In Himes' imagining, Margarita is mistress
to Osip Mandelstam, another real-life Russian luminary, until Mandelstam is arrested, tortured, and banished to the
hinterlands. Then she takes up with Bulgakov. They're more or less happy together until they start noticing a
mysterious figure who seems to pop up at auspicious moments. Ilya is an intelligence agent, and he's out for Bulgakov,
right up until he falls in love with Margarita himself. Then things get blurry. There's an arrest, exile to the barren
steppe, a labor camp, an escape attempt--but Himes' plot never really comes together. The narrative shifts from
Bulgakov's to Margarita's point of view, but neither perspective is convincing, and the characters aren't exactly lifelike.
Himes' choice to invent a fictional mistress for a real writer is an odd one. Actually, Bulgakov apparently based his
Margarita on a woman named Yelena Shilovskaya, whom he married; but there doesn't seem to be a connection
between Shilovskaya and Himes' Margarita. Himes might have been better off inventing all her own characters.
Bulgakov's presence in her narrative serves as an unfortunate, and unwelcome, reminder of the discrepancy in talent.
While Bulgakov was a vicious satirist, wickedly funny, Himes' tribute is startlingly humorless. Despite vivid prose,
Himes' debut seems to wander aimlessly, unconvincing and bleak.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Himes, Julie Lekstrom: MIKHAIL AND MARGARITA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2017. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479234636&it=r&asid=41ccecc033803b16743751ddf4a857f9.
Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479234636
10/8/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507495714776 2/3
Himes, Julie Lekstrom. Mikhail and Margarita
Joshua Finnell
Library Journal.
142.2 (Feb. 1, 2017): p70.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Himes, Julie Lekstrom. Mikhail and Margarita. Europa. Mar. 2017. 384p. ISBN 9781609453756. pap. $18; ebk. ISBN
9781609453749. F
Not unlike her main character, Himes is both a physician and a writer. Her debut novel reflects these two worlds,
underscoring the necessity of artistry and imagination within the clinical application of objective science. Set during
the Soviet famine of 1933, the story unfolds around Mikhail Bulgakov, a playwright and eponymous protagonist of the
novel. Although struggling professionally and creatively under the Soviet censors, Mikhail finds an inexplicable fan in
Joseph Stalin. While currying favor with the Soviet political elite, he is also being shadowed by Ilya Ivanovich, an
agent of the secret police, for his association with Margarita, the mistress of his recently imprisoned friend. As Ilya's
interrogations of Margarita slowly evolve into affection, both men find themselves fighting for love and freedom within
an oppressive system of order and discipline. VERDICT Drawing inspiration from Bulgakov's novel, The Master and
Margarita, unpublished in his lifetime, Himes pens a whirlwind tale of romance and intrigue that approximates, if not
exceeds, the talents of one of Russia's most heralded authors.--Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Finnell, Joshua. "Himes, Julie Lekstrom. Mikhail and Margarita." Library Journal, 1 Feb. 2017, p. 70. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479301202&it=r&asid=fd703310a696864a957ed1b862f0bbbb.
Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479301202
10/8/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507495714776 3/3
Mikhail and Margarita
Publishers Weekly.
264.5 (Jan. 30, 2017): p172.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Mikhail and Margarita
Julie Lekstrom Himes. Europa (Penguin, dist.), $18 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-1-60945-375-6
Himes's confident, carefully crafted debut novel begins in 1933 Moscow with poet Osip Mandelstam and satirist
Mikhail Bulgakov sharing a quiet moment at a restaurant. Later that night, Mandelstam is arrested because of his
unpublished poem about Stalin. The Writers' Union selects Bulgakov to draft a letter pleading for the poet's release.
Bulgakov witnesses the determined efforts of Mandelstam's wife to save her husband and his work. He also becomes
better acquainted with Mandelstam's mistress, Margarita, who eventually becomes Bulgakov's mistress and inspiration
for his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. While the Mandelstams are sent into exile, Margarita is condemned to a
prison camp. Bulgakov follows her to Siberia, as does the government agent who loves her. The story blends political
and literary history with fiction, alternating among moments of gritty realism, deep emotion, irony, and insight. Himes
evokes a world of geniuses and hacks, dangerous men and endangered men, muses and martyrs. She adeptly details
brutality and betrayal as well as creativity and the uncertainties of censorship: one moment the not-so-secret police
trash Bulgakov's apartment, the next Stalin insists a commissar give Bulgakov his jacket. This novel offers two profiles
in courage: a satirist struggling under a dictator who has no use for satire, and the woman Himes imagines inspired the
iconic novel about the survival of love and literature under bureaucratic tyranny. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Mikhail and Margarita." Publishers Weekly, 30 Jan. 2017, p. 172. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480195144&it=r&asid=1312ce4ae7db0c1c34585e354d646dc6.
Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480195144