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A review by spaces_and_solaces
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
4.0
I want us to take a moment to marvel at this absolutely breathtaking book! I know I’ve already mentioned this book once in my list of ‘10 books to read if you are interested in philosophy’, but I am bringing it up again to talk about it a bit more.
Russian Literature never lets down! Case in point, The Master & Margarita. Initially banned, a censored version was published after the author’s death though a full unofficial version was making it rounds in the literary circles underground giving it a cult status.
There is no way I can do justice to this book by giving a ‘summary’, but here it goes:
An editor of an anti-religious literary journal & a poet hired by him to write anti-religious stuff are sitting in Moscow Russia at the Patriarch’s Ponds discussing an atheist poem, when they are interrupted by a mysterious Professor Woland who challenges their atheism with his own story.
He insists that Jesus did exist, and he was present for his crucifixion. These two timelines – Moscow 1930s and Jerusalem at the time of Jesus form the basis of this novel. As if that wasn’t strange enough, the professor also predicts the exact manner of the editor’s death.
Woland, is the name given to the devil by the author. And as the story continues, we are witnessed to the strange & evil happenings around the devil, but we also see the good that the devil does.
This juxtaposition will make you reexamine the age-old question of evil and is one of the central ideas of this novel as is the idea of moral ambiguity.
There is so much more to write about this book, maybe one day I’ll have a blog in which I can post but this book is not to be missed!
Through magical surrealism, the author invokes a powerful sense of terror, joy, madness, and awe.
Russian Literature never lets down! Case in point, The Master & Margarita. Initially banned, a censored version was published after the author’s death though a full unofficial version was making it rounds in the literary circles underground giving it a cult status.
There is no way I can do justice to this book by giving a ‘summary’, but here it goes:
An editor of an anti-religious literary journal & a poet hired by him to write anti-religious stuff are sitting in Moscow Russia at the Patriarch’s Ponds discussing an atheist poem, when they are interrupted by a mysterious Professor Woland who challenges their atheism with his own story.
He insists that Jesus did exist, and he was present for his crucifixion. These two timelines – Moscow 1930s and Jerusalem at the time of Jesus form the basis of this novel. As if that wasn’t strange enough, the professor also predicts the exact manner of the editor’s death.
Woland, is the name given to the devil by the author. And as the story continues, we are witnessed to the strange & evil happenings around the devil, but we also see the good that the devil does.
This juxtaposition will make you reexamine the age-old question of evil and is one of the central ideas of this novel as is the idea of moral ambiguity.
There is so much more to write about this book, maybe one day I’ll have a blog in which I can post but this book is not to be missed!
Through magical surrealism, the author invokes a powerful sense of terror, joy, madness, and awe.