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Before Bulgakov wrote several of the most exquisite Russian satires known to woman, he toyed in the Tolstoyan mode with this wartime chronicle set during the Ukrainian War of Independence, featuring a cast of terror-pocked soldiers and wives. A mixture of poetic reflection on the changing face of Ukraine, action sequences, domestic turmoil, and dreamlike digressions, the novel is an overlooked historical étude, trumped by the arrival of masterpieces like Heart of a Dog and The Fatal Eggs, not devoid of humour, although most certainly an attempt at a grand literary statement to make the Moscow literati spit their stolichnaya (the novel remained unpublished until the 1960s).