The Master and Margarita

UK: Picador, 2010. Paperback. New. A fully annotated version of Mikhail Bulgakov's Russian literature. New tightly bound trade softcover in printed wraps. 8vo. Clean text free of marks or underlining. Includes commentary and bibliography. vii, 367 pp.

Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking. From the back cover, "A literary sensation from its first publication, 'The Master and Margarita' has become an astonishing publishing phenomenon in Russia and has been translated into more than twenty languages, made into plays and films. Mikhail Bulgakov's novel is now considered one of the seminal works of twentieth-century Russian literature. In this imaginative extravaganza the devil, disguised as a magician, descend upon Moscow in the 1939's with his riotous band, which includes a talking cat and an expert assign. together they succeed in comically befuddling a population which denies the devil's existence, even as it is confronted with the diabolic results of a magic act gone wrong. This visit to the world capital of atheism has several aims, one of which concerns the fate of the Master, a writer who has written. novel about Pontius Pilate, and is now in a mental hospital.

By turns acidly static, fais work fantastic and ironically philosophical, this work constantly surprises and entertains, as the action switches back and forth between the Moscow of the 1930's and the first century Jerusalem. The commentary and afterward provide new insight into the mysterious subtexts of the novel, and here 'The Master and Margarita' is revealed all its complexity.