The Author as Hero

An original reading of three famous novels reveals a significant shift in the Russian tradition of psychological prose; Justin Weir develops a persuasive analysis of the complex relationship between authorial self-reflection and literary tradition in three of the most famous Russian novels of the first half of the twentieth century: Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, and Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift. All three novelists respond to a dual crisis, accordi