Russia

I just uploaded 24 more photos from my trip to Russia in 1994. Click the above photo to see the rest of the set.

That’s me in the front row, in the trench coat and glasses.

I just scanned, cropped, straightened and adjusted another fourteen photos from my 1994 trip to Russia. Eighteen down, about eighty to go.

I also just finished updating the Crime Map. So far this year (that I know of) there have been eighteen murders. In 2006 there were 19 murders. We still have almost four months to go until the end of the year. With a little hard work, we can easily surpass last year. Our shareholders demand nothing less of us.

Today, on a whim, I did a Google search for the ISBN of a book I picked up in Russia back in the summer of 1994. I figured that the number would be the one attribute of the book which would not need to be translated.

Lo and behold, I got a hit: Master and Margarita , written by Michael Bulgakov and illustrated by Andrey Kharshak.

So now I was curious: you can't swing a cat on the internet without hitting a Bulgakov reference, but how about Mr. Kharshak? His illustrations are good enough that SOMEBODY must have heard of him... And here he is! Apparently Mr Kharshak is well known everywhere in the world except The United States and the Internet. I should do something about that...

Manuscripts Don't Burn

Golgotha

These are prints of works by Mr. Kharshak which I picked up while in Russia. They are reproduced in Master and Margarita , along with at least two dozen other illustrations.

And for your convenience here is a link to the English version of Master and Margarita (translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky). It is, as they say, a Ripping Good Yarn.