Product Description

A mysterious stranger appears in a Moscow park. Soon he and his retinue have astonished the locals with the magic show to end all magic shows. But why are they really here, and what has it got to do with the beautiful Margarita, or her lover, the Master, a silenced writer? A carnival for the senses and a diabolical extravaganza, this most exuberant of Russian novels was staged in this adaptation at Chichester Festival Theatre.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #464079 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Daily Telegraph, August 2, 2004
The Master and Margarita comes over like a grown-up and vastly superior version of Harry Potter.

Daily Telegraph, August 2, 2004
Outstanding adaptation...breathtaking in its ambition and originality...the literary range is extraordinary

The Guardian, July 31, 2004
An extraordinary mixture of Faustian romance, anti-Stalinist satire and religious enquiry.

Customer Reviews

Vintage Classics version - not the best translation
My review is less about the novel and more about the translation; while I am not a Russian speaker/reader and therefore have not read the original to be able to compare, I think that the "naturalness" of this particular English translation is not that great - the language seems stilted and slightly awkward. At first I wondered if this awkwardness was deliberate (ie that it was also present in the Russian) but having checked the first pages of a couple of other English translations of the same book, I have decided that it isn't as other versions are more readable and "authentic" English. I would suggest trying Volokhonsky & Pevear or Burgin & O'Connor's translations instead.

Different!
I am reading modern Russian authors at the moment and if this is anything to go buy then I am in for a big treat! What a strange tale. I can see why it was banned in Russia during Stalin's time although it could hardly be heralded as subversive - much too subtle.

Surreal soviet-era fantasy
Very strange book. I ought to have hated it more - the politics, in so far as there are any, are unpleasant - the book begins with a confrontation between Satan and soviet apparatchik, with the former admonishing the latter for not believing in either him or Jesus as a historical figure, and the apparatchik then meeting a horrible death exactly as foretold by the Devil. Nasty stupid stuff.

And yet the writing is really very good, and the touch light, and narrative flow intriguing. I ended up finishing this despite myself, and despite having something else that I wanted to get on to.

Stalin liked Bulgakov's work and protected him, despite the writer's anti-soviet attitudes and philosophy. After reading this, I can understand why, thought I never thought of JV as having much of a sense of humour.

An afterthought: after reading the book have a look at the pictures of Bulgakov on the Wikipedia page about him -- at various times in life he rather resembles some of the characters in the novel, I think.