I first read Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita on a balcony of the Hotel Metropole in Saigon on three summer evenings in 1971. The tropical air was heavy and full of the smells of cordite and motorcycle exhaust and rotting fish and wood-fire stoves, and the horizon flared ambiguously, perhaps from heat lightning, perhaps from bombs. Later each night, as was my custom, I would wander out … wander out into the steamy back alleys of the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep, and crouch in doorways with the people and listen to the stories of their culture and their ancestors and their ongoing lives. Bulgakov taught me to hear something in those stories that I had not yet clearly heard. One could call it, in terms that would soon thereafter gain wide currency, “magical realism”. The deadpan mix of the fantastic and the realistic was at the heart of the Vietnamese mythos. It is at the heart of the present zeitgeist. And it was not invented by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as wonderful as his One Hundred Years of Solitude is. Garcia Marquez’s landmark work of magical realism was predated by nearly three decades by Bulgakov’s brilliant masterpiece of a novel. That summer in Saigon a vodka-swilling, talking black cat, a coven of beautiful naked witches, Pontius Pilate, and a whole cast of benighted writers of Stalinist Moscow and Satan himself all took up permanent residence in my creative unconscious. Their presence, perhaps more than anything else from the realm of literature, has helped shape the work I am most proud of. I’m often asked for a list of favorite authors. Here is my advice. Read Bulgakov. Look around you at the new century. He will show you things you need to see.
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One of my favorite books ever. The ending, when the lovers are left in their own paradise is just inspiring.
Great book! Amazing!
I love a good Faustian retelling and this is my favorite. It seamlessly bends genres and surely will appeal to readers who love satire/social commentary, dark comedy, fantasy, or romance and has a cheeky self awareness I love in stories.
I read the Ginsburg translation. It’s wonderfully vivid and flows like poetry. It effectively held my short attention span and made the reading experience so much more enjoyable than if I chose a drier translation. Looking forward to trying the O’Connor/Burgin translation in the future.
September 23, 2020.
Fantasy, mythology, satire, and mystery all in one. Great fun!
I think if I knew the history better I might have understood more of the satirical aspects but I thoroughly enjoyed the book knowing the basics.
We get interesting characters involved in lots of incredible situations leading to lots of fun and craziness.
In many works of fiction the sense of place – the setting – is just as important as the plot and characters – in fact, sometimes the place itself becomes a character. Mickhail Bulgacov made Patriarch’s Ponds –a small lake in Moscow – internationally famous by using it as the setting for the dramatic opening scene of his surrealistic novel, The Master and the Margarita – in which the Devil (disguised as Professor Woland) and his assistants visit Moscow, hole up in the late Berlioz’s apartment, and terrorize the literary elite favored by the establishment (i.e. Stalin).
Bulgacov completed the book just before his death in 1940 but it was not published in Russia until 1966, when it instantly became an underground classic.
The book is a caustic criticism of Soviet society, yet also a moving love story. While professor Woland (who is not an entirely unlikeable Devil) and his minions perform decapitations, commit arson, and practice black magic, Margarita flies on her broom through Moscow in search of her persecuted lover, the Master. In a country where Atheism is the mandatory ‘religion’ the Master has dared to write a historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ.
The petty-minded rejection of his novel drives the Master to burn his manuscript. But Woland later gives the manuscript back, saying, “Didn’t you know that manuscripts don’t burn?” The irony here is that Bulgakov burned an early copy of The Master and Margarita for much the same reasons.
This classic work of surrealism contains many hidden messages and themes, a common practice among writers who wished to survive the Soviet period. In spite of its complex structure and dreamlike reality, it is easy to read and I found it completely addictive.
Highly recommended.
My favorite book. Tragically, Stalin forbade it to be published during Bulgakov’s lifetime. After his death it became one of the most celebrated books in Russia. The logline is “The Devil Comes To Moscow” with his lieutenant, who is a bipedal cat. A must read for anyone who considers himself a connoisseur of literature. It’s like a warm dream that you never want to wake up from.
I recently wrote a review of Bolano’s The Savage Detectives and, coincidentally, had re-read M&M just a week or so before that tome. Perhaps I should not have. Perhaps I should have read some more Mickey Spillane instead. I ended up giving Bolano 4 stars and wanting to give him 3, calling some of his work “tedious” and bemoaning the fact that the work was at times, to me, too reminiscent of my own youth and the works I had read in my youth. Duh.
Everyone has said everything necessary about this book so there isn’t anything I can add, brilliant though I may be. If you are interested in ingenuity and fun, and how postmodernism came to be, it is a must read.
Even by high standards of the Russian literature, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita stands apart. Its amazing cast includes mischievous Satan in Moscow and innocent Jesus in Jerusalem, talking cats and vampires, poets and communists, Judas and Pontius Pilate. A wonderful satire of not just the then-Soviet system but of any society obsessed with superficiality and lacking courage and intellectual curiosity. It was published well after the writer’s death: Bulgakov knew that under Stalin the book was a death sentence for him and his family.
Bears reading more than once but well worth it.
It is a great book.
Must read !
A strangely wonderful tale of the devil and his team’s visit to Moscow and the havoc it brings to the entire population. Have to say, it reads better in Russian (more understandable too).
I was in college the first time I read The Master and Margarita. Tell the truth, it was like nothing I’d ever read before, and I was (am) a prolific reader. The characters are well-fleshed out (I was particularly fond of Behemoth, the demon cat who was also a crack shot). I think one reason I enjoyed it so much was because the author is (was?) Russian, and I think the cultural differences between author and reader (I’m American) gave me an insight into a different way of seeing the world. I’ve read The Master and Margarita I don’t know how many times since college, and each time I do, I enjoy it as much as I did the first.