Morphine

From the author of The Master and Margarita comes this short and tragic masterpiece about drug addiction. "Even in his earliest writings, Mikhail Bulgakov exposed the ugliness and absurdity of the Soviet reality" (The Washington Post).

Young Dr Bromgard has come to a small country town to assume a new practice. No sooner has he arrived than he receives word that a colleague, Dr Polyakov, has fallen gravely ill. Before Bromgard can go to his friend's aid, Polyakov is brought to his practice in the middle of the night with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and, barely conscious, gives Bromgard his journal before dying.

What Bromgard uncovers in the entries is Polyakov's uncontrollable and merciless descent into morphine addiction — his first injection to ease his back pain, the thrill of the drug as it overtakes him, the looming signs of addiction, and the feverish final entries before his death.