The Master and Margarita

Description

With his novel “The Master and Margarita,” Bulgakov enriched Soviet literature with a unique literary genre, one that literary theory has yet to define. “The Master and Margarita” is a satirical historical portrayal of city life in the 1920s and 30s, a period accessible to the author’s expansive narrative vision. This novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) is considered one of the finest novels published in Russia during the Soviet era, and many regard it as the best novel of the 20th century. Bulgakov wrote it, but burned the manuscript in 1930 due to the Soviet authorities. He rewrote it from memory in 1931, completed the second draft in 1936, and the third in 1937. He continued working on the fourth draft until his death in 1940. The novel was not published until twenty-six years later, when his widow serialized it in the Moscow Literary Magazine in 1966.