The Master and Margarita
On a hot spring evening in Soviet Moscow, two members of the literary establishment meet a mysterious foreign professor at Patriarch's Ponds who calmly predicts that one of them will lose his head before the night is out. The professor turns out to be Woland, the Devil himself, traveling with a giant talking black cat named Behemoth, an ex-choirmaster, a vampire, and a naked witch, and the city is about to be turned upside down. In a parallel narrative drawn from a manuscript written by a persecuted novelist known only as the Master, Pontius Pilate confronts a wandering philosopher named Yeshua Ha-Notsri in first-century Jerusalem. Margarita, the Master's lover, makes a bargain with Woland to recover both man and book. Mikhail Bulgakov worked on the novel from 1928 until his death in 1940; it was finally published in censored form in the 1960s and is now recognized as the great satirical masterpiece of Soviet literature.
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The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On a spring evening at Patriarch's Ponds in 1930s Moscow, two officials meet a foreign professor named Woland who turns out to be the devil. With a cat, fanged retainer, and witch on a broomstick, his retinue tears through the city while a novelist called the Master and his lover Margarita watch.
Yes. The Master and Margarita weaves three storylines: a satanic visitor in 1930s Moscow, the love story of the Master and Margarita, and the trial of Pontius Pilate. The structure is demanding but widely admired.
Yes. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita between 1928 and 1940 but it was not published in the Soviet Union until 1966-1967, more than 25 years after his death. The full text was not published in Russia until 1973.
The Master and Margarita was written by Mikhail Bulgakov, published in 1967.
The Master and Margarita is a standalone novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, not part of a series.
The Master and Margarita is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
