Mikhail Bulgakov's 'Diaboliad' is a brilliant collection of satirical short stories, offering a darkly humorous and absurd look at the bureaucratic madness that permeated early Soviet Russia. The titular novella follows a hapless clerk whose identity is stolen by an ambitious, identical man, plunging him into a nightmarish labyrinth of administrative confusion and paranoia. Bulgakov masterfully employs grotesque realism and biting wit to expose the dehumanizing effects of totalitarian systems and the absurdity of everyday life under such regimes, making it a timeless commentary on power and the individual.