The Master and Margarita

Resumen del libro

A literary sensation from its first publication, The Master and Margarita has become an astonishing phenomenon in Russia and has been translated into more than twenty languages, and 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, descends upon Moscow in the 1930s with his riotous band, which includes a talking cat and an expert assassin.

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 a novel about Pontius Pilate, and is now in a mental hospital. By turns acidly satiric, fantastic and ironically philosophical, this work constantly surprises and entertains, as the action switches back and forth between the Moscow of the 1930s and first-century Jerusalem.

The commentary and afterword provide new insight into the mysterious subtexts of the novel, and here The Master and Margarita is revealed in all its complexity. 'The Master and Margarita has at last been translated accurately and completely ...The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative and poignant ...A great work' Chicago Tribune

Biografía del autor

x{0026}lt;P x{0026}lt;B Mijaíl Bulgákovx{0026}lt;/B (1891-1940) nació en Kiev, Ucrania, y estudió medicina aunque renunció al ejercicio a favor de la creación literaria. Entre sus primeras obras destacan x{0026}lt;I Maleficios x{0026}lt;/I (1925), x{0026}lt;I Corazón de perrox{0026}lt;/I (1925) y x{0026}lt;I Morfina x{0026}lt;/I (1927). El reconocimiento le llegó con la novela x{0026}lt;I La guardia blancax{0026}lt;/I (1925), que posteriormente fue dramatizada con el título x{0026}lt;I La huidax{0026}lt;/I (1926). Se enfrentó por ello a la crítica oficial por su favorable retrato de un grupo de oficiales antibolcheviques durante la guerra civil y por la falta de un héroe comunista. Aunque sus obras disfrutaban de gran popularidad, su sátira de las costumbres soviéticas le valió la prohibición a publicar a partir de 1929. Su obra más conocida, x{0026}lt;I El maestro y Margaritax{0026}lt;/I (que no se publicó en la Unión Soviética hasta 1966) fue escrita entre 1929 y 1940, año de la muerte del autor. La fama de Bulgákov se vio reforzada a partir de 1962 por la publicación póstuma de sus novelas, obras teatrales y la biografía x{0026}lt;I Vida del señor Molièrex{0026}lt;/I .x{0026}lt;/P