The Master and Margarita [Paperback]

Mikhail Bulgakov (Author)

Book Description

Series: Meridian | Publication Date: November 1, 1974

TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL GLENNYThe devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat.When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil’s onslaught.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz's apartment. (A puzzled relative receives the following telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.") Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so badly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection.

Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the true object of Woland's visit: the author of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master--as he calls himself--has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors' harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate's story becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov's novel: as a manuscript read by the Master's indefatigable love, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet--and fellow lunatic--Ivan Homeless, and even as a story told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its author? Given that the Master's novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is necessary: "What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?"

Unsurprisingly--in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror--Bulgakov's masterwork was not published until 1967, almost three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly funny, it is a novel like no other. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the true magician here. The Master and Margarita is a different book each time it is opened. --Mary Park --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Bulgakov's satire of the greed and corruption of Soviet authorities illustrates the redemptive nature of art and faith, and Julian Rhind-Tutt's superb interpretation does the classic full justice. With a dramatic flair and a deep, multilayered voice, he pulls off a host of fantastical characters including Professor Woland (Satan) and several of his associates, Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ, witches and madmen and a variety of early 20th-century Moscow literary and theater types. Two minor caveats: a few characterizations are too nasal, and his cockney accents for low-class Russian characters are a bit disconcerting. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Plume (November 1, 1974)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452008999
• ISBN-13: 978-0452008991
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #950,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

210 of 216 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious, Terrifying, and Just Plain Brilliant, April 9, 2003

By 

Christopher Forbes "weirdears" (Brooklyn,, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Master and Margarita (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) (Hardcover)

I've always been a fan of Russian novels, ever since I read my first Dostoevsky novel at the age of 10...(okay, it was a Classics Illustrated comic book version of Crime and Punishment!)but had never run across anything by Bulgakov until a few years ago. A Russian friend of mine really pressed me to read the book. I bought it, but it just stayed on the shelf until a few weeks ago. All I can say is, I didn't know what I was missing. Master and Margarita is a wickedly funny, sad, frightening, and ultimately haunting masterpiece of fiction.

Bulgakov was one of the first generation of Soviet writers who flourished in the 20s, during the short lived Soviet Experimental movement, and then suffered horribly after the stregnthening of Stalin's regime. Bugakov was primarily a man of the Theater, and something of a theatrical quality hangs on to this book. The chapters have an almost tableaux style construction. When the Stalinist purges began, Bulgakov was began work on Master and Margarita, pretty much to please himself. He knew that he would never live to see it published.

The novel itself is nearly impossible to describe. It consists of three separate plots. On the surface is the visit to Moscow, of the Devil in the guise of a professor named Woland, and his henchmen, two grotesque disfigured men, a naked woman and a cat who plays chess among other things. The group proceeds to essentially terrorize the city's intellectual community, mostly by exposing each character's inner hypocracy. The satire of communist society in this section is quite biting, and uproariously funny. Embedded in this story is a "novel within a novel" ...the story of Pontius Pilate and his encounter with the itinerant spiritual man, Yeshua. Finally, there is the story of the separated lovers, the Master and Margarita, who interweave between the other two stories. They live in the present day Moscow, but the Master ostensibly wrote the manuscript which told the story of Pontius Pilate.

This rich and complicated stew of a book works on so many different levels. At it's most obvious, it is a scathing attack on communism and the cultural elite's complicity with the evils of the system. It is also rather pitiless in it's exposure of the greed, corruption and mendacity of human nature. But Bulgakov is not a conventional moralist. The Devil as Woland is an evil figure...sometimes a terrifying figure, and yet he ends up as the instrument of the redemption of both the Master and Margarita. There is a deep spiritual viewpoint at work here...Early in the novel, Yeshua tells Pilate that, "all men are good", to Pilate's incredulity. In the context of the novel, Yeshua seems hopelessly naive, but by the end of the novel, you wonder if this may actually not be the author's central point. Even the devil is capable of some good here.

This book contains a whole world. Characters change in dizzying fasion and events go by with lightening speed. And yet, by the last pages there is a haunting beauty, an almost incandescent light that shines over the prose. Some of these final images stay etched in my brain even now, several weeks after finishing.

I highly recommend that anyone read this book. It may be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It certainly is the greatest Russian novel of the last 100 years!

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Do not, under any condition, buy the Classics House translation, August 7, 2009

By 

S.T. Neb (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Master and Margarita (Paperback)

This review does not refer to Master and Margarita, which is a powerful and genius work of art. This review, instead, refers to the Classics House translation of a powerful and genius work of art.

I will sum it up like this: I came across the phrase 'bum-freezer made of air' on the second page of the Classics House translation. I am fluent in Russian and have many Russian friends, and I asked one of them for their Russian copy of Master and Margarita, so what in the world the translator was intending to convey. In short, they had translated 'vasdooshnei pidjakot' (which means an airy or diaphanous jacket) as 'bum-freezer made of air'. Good job, translators!

Throughout the text, I found extremely strange phrases and sentence constructions that were clearly the result of some of the shoddiest translation I have ever seen. What more, the typeset of this book was chock-full of typos and mistakes - I have counted seventeen on the page I am looking at right now. When reading a novel, it is not fun to be constantly jolted out of the reading experience by noticing all the strange typesetting mistakes and constant strange phrases that make me wonder what word the translator bungled this time. And I really do not recommend this edition to anyone who is not reading it for the laughs.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Do not buy this version of M & M, July 24, 2009

By 

L. Archer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Master and Margarita (Paperback)

The Master and Margarita is a wonderful book, a masterpiece, but this version is so flawed that it's hard to see the jewel underneath.
I bought this copy because I'd lost my last, almost worn out paperback. It is so full of typographical errors that it is nearly unreadable. Spelling mistakes, no spaces after punctuation, too many spaces after punctuation, odd use of conventions (quotation marks, colons, etc) make this apparently slickly produced book (nice cover photo, by the way) appear to be the work of a first year keyboarding student without any proofreading abilities.
The errors are so numerous (many per EVERY paragraph) and so distracting that I am unsure whether I can finish the book before I chuck it in the recycling bin. I hope I can give it zero stars. If I have to select "one star," believe me, it doesn't deserve it.