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

Poeta, novelista, ensayista y periodista, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Barcelona, 1939 - Bangkok, 2003) forma parte del selecto grupo de intelectuales indispensables para entender la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Autor multidisciplinar, fueron sus novelas protagonizadas por el detective Pepe Carvalho las que lo convirtieron en un fenómeno narrativo internacional. Ganador, entre otros galardones, del Premio Nacional de Narrativa, del Premio de la Crítica, del Premio Nacional de las Letras y del Premio Planeta, en toda su obra existe un vínculo común: la recuperación de la memoria a través de la crónica social. Fuera cual fuese el género que tratara, el objetivo de Manuel Vázquez Montalbán fue cuestionar el desorden del mundo desde una perspectiva absolutamente personal e inimitable.