A Country Doctor's Notebook

Originally published in 1925, ‘A Country Doctor's Notebook’ is part autobiography and part fiction collection of short stories by Mikhail Bulgakov—Soviet playwright, novelist, and short-story writer best known for his humor and penetrating satire. This records the author’s experiences practicing in a small village hospital in Smolensk Governorate in revolutionary Russia between 1916 and 1918, originally published in installments in Russian medical journals, and later adapted into the British TV series starring Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm.
These stories chronicle the darkly comic adventures of a physician in rural 1917 Russia. Fresh from medical school in the winter of 1917, the young Dr. Bomgard assumes the role of the only doctor in a provincial Russian hospital. Dealing with cases ranging from the horrific to the hilarious to the surreal, Bomgard recounts his solitary time practicing medicine among the superstitious, uneducated, and deeply suspicious populace of his new town.
He exhibits relentless patience and determination while fighting the daily uphill battle against the challenges of an inexperienced country doctor, including scouring ten textbooks at once, hours before a complicated surgery; dealing with patients who either refuse to take their medicine or take it all at once; and handling a colleague with a dangerous morphine addiction. Somehow, despite the near-constant chaos, Bomgard continues to focus on the life-affirming moments that make his efforts worth the uncertainty, isolation and lost sleep.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Russian: Михаил Булгаков) was a Russian writer, medical doctor, and playwright. His novel The Master and Margarita, published posthumously, has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
He also wrote the novel The White Guard and the plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight (also called The Run), and The Days of the Turbins. He wrote mostly about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War.
Some of his works (Flight, all his works between the years 1922 and 1926, and others) were banned by the Soviet government, and personally by Joseph Stalin, after it was decided by them that they "glorified emigration and White generals". On the other hand, Stalin loved The Days of the Turbins (also called The Turbin Brothers) very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.