The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
“The Devil visits Soviet Moscow with a retinue of demons, and the only honest relationships in the city are between the damned.”
Short Summary
The Devil — appearing as Professor Woland — arrives in 1930s Stalinist Moscow with his retinue of supernatural assistants and proceeds to expose the corruption, hypocrisy, and cowardice of Soviet society through a series of increasingly violent magic shows. Intercut with this satire is a vision of Pontius Pilate judging Yeshua Ha-Nozri (a reimagined Jesus) in ancient Jerusalem, and the love story of the Master — a tormented novelist who has written exactly that Pilate story — and Margarita, who makes a pact with the Devil to save him. The three narratives (Moscow chaos, Yershalaim tragedy, Margarita's supernatural bargain) converge in a finale that delivers peace but not forgiveness to those who earned it.
Detailed Summary
The novel opens with Berlioz, chairman of the Moscow literary organization MASSOLIT, and the young poet Ivan Homeless arguing in Patriarch's Ponds park about whether Jesus ever existed — when a strange foreign professor interrupts to say he was personally present at Pilate's interrogation of Yeshua....