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Back to SearchThe Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is one of the great classics of 20th century Russian literature. Written at the height of the Great Terror in Russia, this scathing and genuinely funny satire went unpublished for 30 years.
The book opens in Moscow in the 1930s when the Devil appears and insinuates himself into the elite soviet literary circles of the era. Going by the name of Professor Woland he claims to be an artiste whose speciality is "black magic". Woland accurately predicts the unexpected demise of a prominent editor, and he and his gang take over the editor’s apartment as their base of operations. The gang pitilessly ridicule the corrupt time-servers, petty bureaucrats and cowardly yes-men of Stalin's Soviet Union via the most entertaining magic ever seen in Moscow. Only a young poet and friend of the deceased editor seems to see how dangerous and evil Woland's gang actually is, but his attempts to warn the authorities get him sent to a lunatic asylum.
Interspersed with the frantic satire of the Moscow storyline is the calm and reflective narrative of a tortured Pontius Pilate obsessed with the philosophy of Yeshua, the young Jewish mystic he has just condemned to death.
In the lunatic asylum, the young poet is introduced to a broken and impoverished writer known only as "the Master". The Master has abandoned his lover, Margarita, and his art and was driven to the asylum when he is unable to find a publisher for his life's work – a novel about Pontius Pilate and Yeshua. Margarita still loves the Master, and makes a deal with Professor Wolland to rescue him from the madhouse. The two lovers perish, but while the Master "does not deserve the light, he deserves peace" and he and Margarita continue in a gentle version of limbo where they stroll together "in the daytime under the cherry trees just coming into bloom, and in the evening listen to Schubert’s music".
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