Three stories in one: (a) The Devil arrives in town and preys on the weak; (b) The Master, author of a book about Jesus, is reunited with the love of his life; (c) The Master's book, a revisionist Biblical story. All in all this book is a wild ride, and a complicated novel. I'm still not entirely sure what it was about! Russian politics, religion, morality, and somewhere in the thick of it, a love that transcends all. Definitely made for interesting book club conversation! ( )

I loved the unforgettable characters, witty prose and hilarious set pieces but overall didn't really care for the plot (socio-religious commentary aside, it's just basically a series of comic encounters): I kept wishing the story would hurry up and get to the point. I found the Pontius Pilate sub-story extremely tedious. ( )

“Who told you there was no such thing as real, true, eternal love? Cut out his lying tongue!”

On a bench in Patriarchs’ Pond Park, two literary types discussing the Christian religion are accosted by a mocking figure. The boorish editor, Berlioz (an incidental figure, and the uncoincidental namesake of the composer of La damnation de Faust) has his death prophesized by the stranger, a prophecy which wastes no time in being realized due to the demonically inevitable conjunction of sunflower oil, a turnstile, and an all-too-punctual streetcar. Thus, another latter-day John the Baptist is beheaded.

With this prologue, The Master and Margarita begins a dual narrative which commences in the midst of Holy Week and reaches its culmination on Easter Sunday. The primary narrative (1920s Moscow) is satiric and brutally funny, while the story within the story, the Master’s retelling of Christ’s Trial and Passion is serious and delicately written. As the primary story unfolds, the identity of the stranger and his retinue (which includes a harlequin figure and a huge black tomcat with a gourmand’s appetite) becomes increasingly apparent, an identity which would be unmistakable even without the various hat-tips to the Faust legend. For the “magician” Woland, time and reality are pliable, lending a surreal quality to the story that is both hilarious and disconcerting (see the - literally - empty suit diligently catching up on its paperwork). The tendency of the narrative is more along the lines of a trickster cycle than a morality play, although the Pontius Pilate storyline is a study in existential dilemma worthy of Dostoyevsky or Kafka.

The prohibitions and paranoia of Soviet Russia (“Never Speak to Strangers” is one chapter title) are slyly satirized to the degree that Bulgakov’s novel was suppressed for decades before its first publication in 1966/67. The paranoia, the empty suits, the xenophobia, and the use of the asylum as a means of control are some of Bulgakov’s touchstones, yet even in Stalinist Russia, he managed to tell a tale of love and final redemption, courtesy of that scapegoat of humanity who is “Part of that Power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”

“Never speak to strangers,” warns the first chapter of this wonderful book, but that is exactly what Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, chairman of the Union of writers in Moscow, so carelessly does. The stranger happens to be Satan himself and when Berlioz boldly claims that Christ does not exist, the Devil with a cruel act, ironically not only proofs his existence but that of the anti-Christ as well. This then is the start of a wild chase through the Stalinist Moscow of the nineteen thirties and the beginning of one of the strangest stories which managed to get printed under the Soviet Totalitarian regime.

Written between 1930 and 1940, when Stalinist terror was at it worst, the content of the novel “The Master and Margarita” literally was life threatening to its author Michael Bulgakov. It is very likely that Bulgakov would not have survived their reprisals if the Soviet authorities would have discovered his manuscript. The author was very well aware of this and did indeed destroy a first version of his masterpiece out of precaution.

It is difficult to imagine what live must have been for an intelligent sensitive artist under Stalinist totalitarian regime. It would be something like Salman Rushdie writing the Satanic verses while living in Kabul!

If fighting back in the open was suicidal, how could you mentally survive such a situation? In the “Master in Margarita”, the narrative of Jesus condemnation offers already one option: to offer one‘s cheek and mumble with the crucified: “forgive them for they do not know what they are doing”.

Bulgakov however finds in M& M a third and safe way to ventilate his anger and frustration and he does so in a very entertaining way: he gets back at his tormentors by retaliating through his artistic creations. He sides with the Devil and his retinue and unleashes his destructive anger on his enemies.

Imagine for example that the blasphemous first chapter of M&M was indeed triggered by the iconoclastic poetry of the militant atheist Demyan Bedny.
Through his writing, the highly offended Bulgakov could get back at him through the viciously beheading scene of Berlioz. “You don’t believe in God?” “Whack there goes your stupid head!”

Again, a bit further in the book when Ivan Bezdomniy,Berlioz companion of the first chapter tries to explain what happened to the unbelieving Director of the psychiatric ward Bulgakov strikes again : “Tell your version of the truth and finish locked up as the schizophrenic moron you really are”.

One cannot but smile in sympathy with Bulgakov and applaud the humour he extracts from the terrifying environment of his daily life. Writing these scenes in the precarious safety of his flat must have been a therapeutic reaction to the author’s accumulated anger.

As we further pursue the Devil and his gang, we are introduced full speed to numerous situations, different locations and dozens of people.
However, the moment we are introduced to them, most of the characters fall victim to the devil’s terrifying magic. People mysteriously disappear, they accidentally die, they are exiled to other cities, and they are imprisoned or locked up in an asylum. Everybody is guilty of something and is found out: Black market, foreign currencies exchange, briberies, etc.
The results of Satan’s acts mirror the consequences of indiscretions and carelessness in this Stalin era Moscow, where normality is imposed terror.

Together with the Muscovites, we are asking ourselves: "What is happening?"

It seems that the Devil has arrived in Moscow and settled in an apartment on Sadavoya Street in the centre of the city. Again Bulgakov and his Devil punish the inhabitants of the apartment in the same way as what the Soviets did to the previous proprietors. Where are the original inhabitants of Saravoya 50 ? Obliterated? Forgotten? We don’t even remember their names after they are taken away by the secret police.

The Devil and his gang of cronies are settling scores with the custodians of the official literature in order to take over the presentation at the Variety Theatre.
The grand show of magic and grotesque carnival offered to the Moscovian public causes such havoc and mayhem that it unsettles Artistic Moscow to its deepest roots.

Once more Bulgakov exposes his revenge. He rips apart the entire Variety theatre top, these sycophantic puppets of the regime and makes fun of their audience. Bulgakov let’s his Satanic characters tear heads from bodies, hurl them to Yalta, chase them naked trough the streets of Moscow to uncover their greed and their evil stupidity.

But there is more. Satan has chosen Moscow as the location for his yearly Spring ball, the Gothic Society happening of the Underworld. Everything is ready although one key invitee is missing… a hostess to welcome the demonic guests.

Beautiful (and married) Margarita has fallen in love with a writer who is called “the Master”. They have occasional secret rendezvous in the basement apartment of the artist. The Master is writing a story about Pontius Pilate. While Margarita is reconsidering her marriage and dreaming of a life with her artist lover, the Master like Bulgakov is pondering over the dangerous content of his work.

One day the lover disappears and without Margarita knowing it, is locked up in the asylum. As we end the first part of the book, poor lonely Margarita caught in her marriage has to suffer in silence.

The second part of Bulgakov’s starts with bringing beautiful Margarita and the Devil together.
When the Devil offers her a way out of her unhappy romantic condition, she grabs this opportunity and this classy lady, in a flash, turns into a naked fury riding her broomstick over Moscow and out of pure anger, frustration and revenge destroys a complete building. This act, which again mirrors Bulgakov’s contained rage, Margarita’s wild ride trough the Russian night sky and her subsequent hosting of Satan’s spring ball, allows Bulgakov to paint the most superbly entertaining and spectacular theatrical scenes.
The Devil finds in Margarita an elegant hostess to his party. To reward her for her excellent performance at the grand Demonic Spring ball, the Devil reunites Margarita with her lover.

The Master and Margarita is a great and entertaining book. The pace of narration is fast and the characters and settings are numerous. Fortunately the book is chopped in thirty or so short chapters as if the author wanted us to be able to catch our breath in this whirlwind of Russian literature.

But most of all we are reminded that M&M kept Bulgakov alive during these terrible years and offer us a beautiful insight in his silent resistance.

Magic realism? Naw, broham, it's just what happens when Satan comes to town. I guess the anti-Stalinist undercurrent gives rise to "what creates your reality?"-type thoughts--I say it's notmagic realism because everything is explained by a certain dark prince and not part of intrinsic reality, but when your intrinsic reality is "Everything is explained by Stalin! Stalin will tell you what reality is!" then maybe the moniker has a cetain aptness.

Anyway, I like Satan's style. I like the way he empowers people, I ike the way him and Jesus work together (the only setup that ever made sense, take note, vulgar Abrahamic religiosity), and when Margarita goees screaming across the sky as a witch for the first time it's like dropping Cinderella into some mashup between An American Tail and some old D&D adventure where David Topovkul outfoxes Demogorgon in hilarious fashion and just as it can't possibly continue any longer the rest of the party burst in and get the blood they've patiently been craving. Poor put-upon Behemoth and Koroviev and Hella (ha!) and Azazello, and wht a masterstroke to include the other dude with his empty eyes to remind you, uh . . . pure evil?

Anyway, they put on an amazing show, and I love that Bulgakov not only reslutely sticks to the POV or at least affairs of the cultural nomenklatura and the Moscow bourgeoisie more generally (it's a useful corrective--there was a Moscow bourgeoisie! Not a technocracy, a real honest-to-God-and-Woland-and-Uncle-Joe bourgeoisie with old-world manners and shit) but implicates himself by dropping himself squarely in the centre, nameless but still oddly proud. and you think shit, it was still a tight enough world that old Misha Bulgakov could call up the Chairman and ask to be let out of the country, and if the mass society had made so little headway in the Soviet Union, it really makes you look twice at the American "meritocracy" with its Holts and Thorpes and Rockefellers and Bushes.

But lest this sour you on Bulgakov, first I say, read this book! It was samizdat and fuck Solzhenitsyn, dude, because this prolly saved lives instead of ruining them. And he totally gets the equivocation charge, setting himself up with Pilate the way he does. And the interrogation scene won't chill your blood the same as Orwell's Room 101, but the relish and showmanship that gets put into it chills in a different way--I venture to say that Bulgakov's Azazello even more than Orwell's O'Brien could get away with the "boot stamping on a human face--forever", which is pretty, let's face it, camp.

And there are so many wonderful moments and it makes you sad because there will always be oligarchies and there will always be totalitarianism, but this particular fiery Russian mix of the two, with the class encounter and peasants being asked to be citizens and office owrkers to be comrades, has vanished from the Earth, and it'll take Satan to bring it back again, and among other things this book makes a good auxiliary argument that we'd accept it with enough bread and circuses and condemn the demons,from Hell or just the Caucasus, twenty yearrs down the road when the fear had worn off. So good for Mikhail, putting this in the world. ( )