The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov (Author), Diana Burgin (Translator), Katherine Teirnan O'Conner (Translator), Diana Burgin (Translator), Mikhail Bulgakov (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1997

  $8.11

  A literary sensation from its first publication, The Master and Margarita has become an astonishing phenomenon in Russia and has been translated into more than twenty languages, and made into plays and films. Mikhail Bulgakov's novel is now considered one of the seminal works of twentieth-century Russian literature. In this imaginative extravaganza the devil, disguised as a magician, descends upon Moscow in the 1930s with his riotous band, which includes a talking cat and an expert assassin. Together they succeed in comically befuddling a population which denies the devil's existence, even as it is confronted with the diabolic results of a magic act gone wrong. This visit to the world capital of atheism has several aims, one of which concerns the fate of the Master, a writer who has written a novel about Pontius Pilate, and is now in a mental hospital. By turns acidly satiric, fantastic and ironically philosophical, this work constantly surprises and entertains, as the action switches back and forth between the Moscow of the 1930s and first-century Jerusalem. The commentary and afterword provide new insight into the mysterious subtexts of the novel, and here The Master and Margarita is revealed in all its complexity. 'The Master and Margarita has at last been translated accurately and completely ...The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative and poignant ...A great work' Chicago Tribune

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $6.53

  Written during the darkest period of Stalin's repressive reign and a satire of Soviet life, this book combines two parts: one set in contemporary Moscow and the other in ancient Jerusalem, each full of incident, and with historical, imaginary, frightful and wonderful characters.

• New

  Paperback
  1994

  $18.56

  Introduction by Simon Franklin; Translation by Michael Glenny

• New

  Hardcover
  1992

  $16.18

  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.