by Mikhail Bulgakov

4.6 stars – 2,634 reviews

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Originally published posthumously in 1966, ‘The Master and Margarita’ has been called one of the masterpieces and the best-selling Russian novels of the 20th century by Mikhail Bulgakov, a Russian writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. The novel’s vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author’s lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.
At the intersection of fantasy and realism, satire and unflinching emotional truths, Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic novel eloquently lampoons every aspect of Soviet life under Stalin’s regime, from politics to art to religion, while interrogating the complexities between good and evil, innocence and guilt, and freedom and oppression.
Spanning from Moscow to Biblical Jerusalem, a vibrant cast of characters—a “magician” who is actually the devil in disguise, a giant cat, a witch, a fanged assassin—sow mayhem and madness wherever they go, mocking artists, intellectuals, and politicians alike. In and out of the fray weaves a man known only as the Master, a writer demoralized by government censorship, and his mysterious lover, Margarita.