Synopsis
An ironic parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil, and on human frailty and the strength of love. The Devil appears in Moscow accompanied by a retinue of characters including a large vodka-drinking, pistol toting, black cat named Behemoth, the beautiful Margarita, and a writer known only as "The Master." These characters are joined by Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ to combine in a wildly entertaining and unforgettable tale. Bulgakov tirelessly reworked the text of this book, going through eight separate versions in twelve years, the final corrections being dictated by Bulgakov to his wife after he had gone blind. Banned for decades in the Soviet Union, it was first published there in a censored version in 1966.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-03-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Height: | 8.3 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 11.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s.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. One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.
Industry Reviews
"A wild surrealistic romp... Brilliantly flamboyant and outrageous."
Detroit News - Joyce Carol Oates
"Fine, funny, imaginative....'The Master and Margarita' stands squarely in the great Gogolesque tradition of satiric narrative."
Newsweek - Saul Maloff
"[F]unny and frightening....Bulgakov...was writing it, without any hope or thought of publication, in a time and place where arbitrary arrests and disappearances were a common occurrence, and yet where people managed to devise for themselves...a fable of normality. Bulgakov confronts this fable with a further fable..."
London Review of Books - Michael Wood (10/16/1997)
"Bulgakov's most daring work. Its publication for the first time in Russia is part of a literary rebellion that is sweeping through Soviet letters."
Maloff
"A classic of 20th-century fiction."
Maloff
This uncensored translation of Bulgakov's posthumously published masterpiece of black magic and black humor restores its slyest digs and sharpest jabs at Stalin's regime, which suppressed it. Writing in a punning, soaring prose thick with contemporary historical references and political irony, Bulgakov (1891-1940) did not make things easy for future translators. The story itself is demanding: the arrival of the Devil and his entourage in Stalin's Moscow frames a Faustian tale of a suppressed writer (the Master) and his devoted lover (his Margarita), set against a realistic narrative the Master's rejected manuscript of Pontius Pilate's police state in Jerusalem. An immediate contemporary classic when it was first serialized in Moscow in censored form in 1967-68, the novel suffered in its previous English translations, which were either incomplete or stylistically loose. This new translation, with its accuracy and depth, finally does justice to the politically and verbally outrageous qualities of the original. Careful footnotes explain and contextualize Bulgakov's dense allusions to, and in-jokes about, life under Stalin. (Sept.)
Bernstein
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