Bulgakov’s book “The Diaboliad” is the first and only collection of his long and short stories published during the writer’s lifetime. The book came out in the “Nedra” publishing house. Mikhail Afanasyevich met its secretary, Pyotr Zaitsev, at one of the literary evenings in the summer of 1923. Soon Bulgakov also met the editor-in-chief, Nikolay Angarsky. He was impressed by the prose of the writer and first printed the story “The Diaboliad” in the almanac “Nedra”, and then published a book of Bulgakov’s stories. Apart from “The Diaboliad” itself, it included the stories “The Fatal Eggs”, “The Adventures of Chichikov”, “No. 13. The Elpit-Rabkommun House” and “Chinese Story”.

Bulgakov took several copies of the collection to a binding workshop and ordered a special crimson binding for them. One of them was given to his second wife Lyubov Belozerskaya with an inscription:

Muka was the name of the Bulgakovs’ famous cat — the writer’s friends Natalia Ushakova, Sergey Topleninov and Vladimir Dolgorukov even made a homemade book about it with drawings and poems entitled ‘Maka’s Muka” (Bulgakov’s pet nickname).

A satirical and fantasy story “The Diaboliad” contains many references to Bulgakov’s favorite writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol and the works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.