The Master And Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov (Author), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator), Mikhail Bulgakov (Author), Richard Pevear (Translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $11.05

  Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is a fiercely satirical fantasy that remained unpublished in its author's home country for over thirty years. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the acclaimed translators of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. In Soviet Moscow, God is dead, but the devil - to say nothing of his retinue of demons, from a loudmouthed, gun-toting tomcat, to the fanged fallen angel Koroviev - is very much alive. As death and destruction spread through the city like wildfire, condemning Moscow's cultural elite to prison cells and body bags, only a madman, the Master and Margarita , his beautiful, courageous lover, can hope to end the chaos. Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign and circulated in samizdat form for decades, when The Master and the Margarita was finally published it became an overnight literary phenomenon, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere. This luminous translation from the complete and unabridged Russian text is accompanied by an introduction by Richard Pevear exploring the extraordinary circumstances of the novel's composition and publication, and how Bulgakov drew on carnivalesque folk traditions to create his ironic subversion of Soviet propaganda. This edition also contains a list of further reading and a note on the text. After finishing high school, Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) entered the Medical School of Kiev University, graduating in 1916. He wrote about his experiences as a doctor in his early works Notes of a Young Country Doctor . His later works treated the subject of the artist and the tyrant under the guise of historical characters, but The Master and Margarita is generally considered his masterpiece. If you enjoyed The Master and Margarita , you might like Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels , also available in Penguin Classics . One of the great novels of the 20th century, a scary, darkly comic allegory . ( Daily Telegraph ).

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $32.11

  As a mysterious gentleman and self-proclaimed magician arrives in Moscow, followed by a most bizarre retinue of servants - which includes a strangely dressed ex-choirmaster, a fanged hitman and a mischievous tomcat with the gift of the gab - the Russian literary world is shaken to its foundations. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil, and that he has come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of the disbelieving capital. But the Devil's mission quickly becomes entangled with the fate of the Master - the author of an unpublished historical novel about Pontius Pilate - who has turned his back on real life and his lover Margarita, finding shelter in a lunatic asylum after traumatic publishers' rejections, vilification in the press and political persecution. Will the Devil manage to enlist the fiery Margarita into his ranks, will she remain faithful to the Master to the very end and come to his rescue? At the same time, a satirical romp and a daring analysis of the nature of good and evil, innocence and guilt, The Master and Margarita is the crowning achievement of one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century. This new translation by Hugh Aplin is based on the recently restored, unexpurgated edition, which benefits from over three decades of Bulgakov scholarship.

• New

  Paperback
  1994

  $18.78

  Introduction by Simon Franklin; Translation by Michael Glenny

• New

  Hardcover
  1992

  $16.37

  My favorite novel -it's just the greatest explosion of imagination, craziness, satire, humor, and heart. (Daniel Radcliffe). The devil with his retinue, a poet incarcerated in a mental institution for speaking the truth, and a startling re-creation of the story of Pontius Pilate, constitute the elements out of which Mikhail Bulgakov wove The Master and Margarita, the unofficial masterpiece of twentieth-century Soviet fiction. Long suppressed in its native land, this account of strange doings in Moscow in the 1930s provides us with the essence of the sceptical, trenchant, unadulterated voice of dissent.