Mikhail Bulgakov

Michael Glenny

The underground masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian fiction, Mikhail Bulgakov’s THE MASTER AND MARGARITA was written during Stalin’s regime and could not be published until many years after its author’s death.

When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a pyschiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov’s dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita’s enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time.

Features an introduction by Simon Franklin.

The Master and Margarita

Мастер и Маргарита

tanja spasojevic

Nica Rhiana

Helen 

“I demand to be turned back to my usual shape! the pig suddenly grunted, half angry, half begging. I refuse to take part in an illegal assembly! Margarita Nikolayevna, kindly take your maid off my back.”

louv

“The poet had wasted his night while others were feasting and now understood that it was impossible to get it back. One needed only to raise one’s head from the lamp to the sky to understand that the night was irretrievably lost. Waiters were hurriedly tearing the tablecloths from the tables. The cats slinking around the veranda had a morning look. Day irresistibly heaved itself upon the poet.”

“Just like a murderer jumps out of nowhere in an alley, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once! The way lightning strikes, or a Finnish knife! She, by the way, would later say that it wasn’t like that, that we had, of course, loved each other for a very long time, without knowing or ever having seen each other, and that she was living with another man … and I was then … with that … what’s her name”

“Forgive me, but I don’t believe you,” said Woland. “That cannot be. Manuscripts don’t burn.”

“You pronounced your words as if you refuse to acknowledge the existence of either shadows or evil. But would you kindly ponder this question: what would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and from living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You’re stupid.”

The Master and Margarita quotes

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