Product Description

This title is translated by Michael Glenny. The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil's onslaught.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9769 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Review
'A stunning, superb allegorical novel...Bulgakov is one of the greatest modern Russian writers, perhaps the greatest' Independent 'It is a hymn to the imagination' Desmond O'Grady 'This book is absorbing, brilliant slapstick, and looks deep in to the heart of fantasy and longing' Sunday Times 'A masterpiece...a classic of twentieth-century fiction' New York Times

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

I would give this 6 stars but I was not allowed.
There is little that I could write to do sufficient justice to such an inspired flight of the imaginaltion. The dual settings in the novel of the fantastical last few days in the life of Jesus Christ compared to the chaos of a timeless Moscow held in thrall by the Devil in the guise of a cheap stage magican. The plots are so diverse and the characters are totally compelling (amongst them is Behemoth a cigarette smoking, gun toting, 5ft Black cat!) I have never read anything so darkly compelling yet wickedly funny that works on so many levels. I have read this book at least once a year for the last 6 years and I think I will continue to do so until I have picked it clean, and that will take me good while yet. Bulgakov is the true Master.

Russian literature at its best
My friend recommended this book to me, and what actually made me to buy it was because he considered it his favorite book of all time. I agree with him about that. It is an amazing book. Not only that, I developed an interest in the author's other works. Nevertheless, this is the best book written by Mikhail Bulgakov. It is an absolute masterpiece, a classic accepted in Russia and the rest of the world.

"MASTER AND MARGARITA" is about purges Stalin ordered in the Soviet Union. The curious thing about this book is that the purges are depicted not to have been carried out Stalin's men, but rather by Satan himself, and in the manner of Baron Munchaussen, we get to know of a huge talking cat. Like animal farm, the greater meaning of the book is revealed through the intelligent though bizarre, compelling and humorous story. One is constantly left anticipating what the next page holds. There are so many layers and so many little details that one wonders how the author managed to put them together.

Bulgakov is the Soviet version of Imperial Russia's Dostoevsky, but unlike Dostoyevsky who had a mastery of the mind/soul Bulgakov mastery is in the literature of oppression. I have recommended this book to many friends and family and recommend it to any reader interested in the enigma that is Russia, especially Stalinist Russia. Other interesting stories set in Russia are THE UNION MOUJIK,TARAS BULBA, PUTIN'S RUSSIA, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LENIN, WAR AND PEACE. Also note that you are sure to find the widest selection of odd and creepy characters in this book .

Terror, secrets, foreigners, jesus, death and manuscripts
Stalin's hierarchical, monolithic political structures of the 1930's intensified the struggle against "enemies of the people" by arresting and executing over 15 million Russians, amongst them managers, intelligentsia and writers. The Secret Police orchestrated State terror by raiding the houses of intellectuals at night if they were suspected of satirising the Soviet state. Bulgakov himself slept with a suitcase full of warm clothes beneath his bed, should the knock at the door at dawn be the KGB. If caught with the manuscript of The Master and Margarita, he would have been sent without trial to the prison camps of Siberia, where he would have been worked through exhaustion into death.

An appreciation of the harsh ideological backdrop to this vital and extraordinary novel makes its vision all the more astonishing. Bulgakov examines with a breathtaking wit such subversive issues as institutionalised atheism, Satan's sypmpathetic aspect, the similarities between the political and social systems of Pontius Pilate's Jerusalem and Stalin's Moscow, the arbitrariness of justice, the redemptive power of love (in this case adulterous), and the human effort towards regeneration through compassion and truth. In his generous yet clearly defined system of justice cowards are humiliated, guilty as they are of the worst sin, and the fearless are rewarded with a thin beam of moonlight, to freedom and salvation.

The Master and Magarita is as great a text as any I have ever read; Bulgakov's prodigious verbal gift is equal to Joyce or even Shakespeare, and as such deserves a special, exalted place at the pinnacle of World literature.