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A review by rowanoats
Mästaren och Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
2.0
When I was a teen, I tried to read La Divina Commedia for a school project. I never got further than skimming through Hell and in retrospect, I really didn't possess enough knowledge about 13th century Italian politics to appreciate it.
This book felt a lot like that. I'm sure it says a whole lot about 1930s Russia but for me, right now, in 2019 without a degree in Russian history and/or literature, it just reads like a weird, random, confusing slog. So many characters and names and nicknames I stood no chance of keeping track of. I don't really know what happened, I don't know what it was a metaphor for, and although the preface of the edition I read claims it's a masterpiece, a manifesto -resistance - I feel like I need to take a class on literature science to truly pick up on any of that.
The second half was better, as it seemed to have more of a plot and I didn't mind the Jerusalem parts as much as others seem to have. I'm glad people enjoy it, but I sure didn't.
This book felt a lot like that. I'm sure it says a whole lot about 1930s Russia but for me, right now, in 2019 without a degree in Russian history and/or literature, it just reads like a weird, random, confusing slog. So many characters and names and nicknames I stood no chance of keeping track of. I don't really know what happened, I don't know what it was a metaphor for, and although the preface of the edition I read claims it's a masterpiece, a manifesto -resistance - I feel like I need to take a class on literature science to truly pick up on any of that.
The second half was better, as it seemed to have more of a plot and I didn't mind the Jerusalem parts as much as others seem to have. I'm glad people enjoy it, but I sure didn't.