The Master and Margarita
_{by Mikhail Bulgakov}


Look inside this book

Quote:

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960's. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth.

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• read more about the book
  
• full e-texts of previous translations by Michael Glenny and by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

I seriously believe Bulgakov got possessed or something and therefore wrote The Master and Margarita as it is of pure genius. He worked on it for 12 whole years, and the last changes for it he dictated to his wife in his final weeks, as he lay dying of nephrosclerosis. The Master and Margarita is a dazzling Gogolesque fantasy. Witty and ribald, and at the same time a penetrating philosophical novel wrestling with profound and eternal problems of good and evil. I can make no examples of the unique way how Bulgakov incorporates the mundane within the divine, and the divine within the mundane. It supposedly complies to a genre called magic realism and personally I keep it right between Carroll's Alice books and Goethe's Faust in my bookshelf

The Master and Margarita was banned until 1966-67 when it was published in an egregiously censored form (first unexpurgated release was only in 1973), but till then it travelled secretly hand to hand as so called samizdat (clandestinely printed and distributed editions). I haven't read the english translation myself and I'm very concerned about what it's like, because of the style in which the book is written, some things just may not make it into another language (I praise God I have studied Russian). Anyway, I think it's really f#&*!%g hilarious and everyone should read it at least once. And don't let the Russian person's and geographic names confuse You. And I really do recommend checking out Middlebury College The Master and Margarita site, a lot of in-depth analysis and background information.

Here are some "screenshots" (artist Charlie Stone's vision)



And Mikhail Bulgakov himself: