Product Description
This epic novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, one of the leading writers of the Soviet era, was published 26 years after his death and is considered one of the masterpieces of 20th-century literature. We are publishing this translation after revising it to include the 80 pages that were originally censored and removed from the book at the time of its first publication. In 1930s Moscow, a man with the ability to foresee the future approaches two writers debating whether Jesus actually lived. The stranger, who also reads the writers’ futures, tells them that one will die soon and the other will go mad.
This stranger, named Woland, is none other than the Devil himself, who has come to visit Soviet society. Indeed, one of the writers dies shortly thereafter. The other writer, who goes mad and is confined to a mental hospital, encounters the Master there. He listens to the Master’s novel about Pontius Pilate—the governor who played a major role in Jesus’ crucifixion—and to the Master’s love for Margarita.
Of course, there is something that connects all these people from different walks of life. Composed of stories intricately woven together—in which we can detect the Devil’s hand in each—*The Master and Margarita* plunges Moscow into a fantastical chaos as Woland and his minions intervene. With his sharp, dark humor, Bulgakov dismantles and shatters the Soviet system, which ran like clockwork. Even all these years after it was written, *The Master and Margarita* retains its relevance and freshness; it is an allegory of social order.