Mikhail Bulgakov

Will Self

Michael Glenny

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Jersey

Russia's literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman - a professor of black magic - arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil himself, come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of a disbelieving capital.

The Master and Margarita

6e01c258-9b45-418b-b159-4ff5a090cf44

Mirra Ginsburg

Unread, small stain as pictured, otherwise clean and unmarked. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Michigan

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 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.

Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, The Master and Margarita became an overnight literary phenomenon when it was finally published it, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere. Bulgakov's carnivalesque satire of Soviet life describes how the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow one spring afternoon. Brimming with magic and incident, it is full of imaginary, historical, terrifying and wonderful characters, from witches, poets and biblical tyrants to the beautiful, courageous Margarita, who will do anything to save the imprisoned writer she loves. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, with an Introduction by Richard Pevear

Category - Fiction / Classics

Format - Paperback

Condition - Good

Listed - 11 days ago

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Ships From - New Jersey

Est. Publication Date - Jan 2010

The Master and Margarita

ISBN: 9780099540946

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Category - Fiction / Classics

Format - Paperback

Condition - Good

Listed - 11 days ago

Views - 12

Wishes - 1

Ships From - New Jersey

Est. Publication Date - Jan 2010

The Master and Margarita

ISBN: 9780099540946

Publisher Description

The Master and Margarita

By:

$8.00 $10.00

Meet the seller

Discover more

The Master and Margarita

By: Mikhail Bulgakov

Pango Buyer Protection

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Additional titles by Mikhail Bulgakov

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