The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

The devil and his minions come to Moscow to cause mayhem in the literary society.

It all starts harmlessly enough, with the writers Berlioz and Bezdomny having a discussion about Jesus, as a stranger - most likely a foreigner - interjects and begins telling a story about Pontius Pilate. When, unexpectedly, he predicts the death of Berlioz on this very evening the pair of friends question his motives and sanity. The stranger tells of the death in great detail, mentioning some spilled oil and a decapitation. And this is what happens. Berlioz, slipping on oil falls under a street car and loses his head.

Berzdomny, who starts to realize who this stranger may be, follows him over land and water, losing his clothes along the way and ends up in a club wearing only underwear and talking about the devil and his elusiveness. Of course, everybody thinks he is mad and his friends have him brought to an asylum. It is there that he meets the Master in the title, but a few hundred pages into the book.

The devil, or Woland, as he becomes known, next moves into the apartment dead Berlioz left behind and arranges to appear in a varieté to stage a performance in black magic. This is a great success and the tricks he pulls include raining money on the audience and providing the women with new clothes. However, once the audience leave the theater the money turns into pieces of newspaper or - worse! - foreign currency...not something you want to be caught carrying around in Moscow. The clothes simply disappear, leaving women half naked out in the streets.

The on- goings in the apartment are more curious still. People enter it but when law enforcement, now looking for the group of villains, enter it, there is nobody there. Not Woland or one of his two helpers, Koroviev (aka Fagotto) and Behemoth, the cat.

Meanwhile, in the asylum, the Master tells Bezdomny his sad story. He wrote a book about Pontius Pilate that was not received as well as he'd hoped and he voluntarily went to the insane asylum while his lover, Margarita, was away to tell her husband she was going to leave him.

We meet Margarita herself at the beginning of part two (halfway through the book). She turns into a witch and flies on a broom to meet with Woland, where she is for an evening of entertainment dressed up and treated like a queen by a parade of deceased people. For her service, Woland grant her her wish to be reunited with her lover, who appears out of thin air, confused and still wearing his hospital gown.

The Master and Margarita eventually get to spend eternity together and fly off with Woland and his minions, but not after they cause some more damage and burn down a few buildings in their wake.

This book is quite the wild ride, barely catching a breath in the first half. The initial chapter introducing Margarita seems to slow it down a bit, but as soon as the rather gruesome and lengthy ball is over, it picks back up again and is most enjoyable.

It is not as confusing as I may make it sound. Very entertaining.

8/10