“The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov (translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor)
"When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a pyschiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov’s dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between twentieth-century Moscow and first-century Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita’s enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time.
A literary sensation from its first publication, The Master and Margarita has been translated into more than twenty languages. Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel is now considered one of the seminal works of twentieth-century Russian literature. By turns acidly satiric, fantastic and ironically philosophical, this story constantly surprises and entertains."
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