The Master and Margarita : Macmillan Collector-s Library

A literary sensation from its first publication, The Master and Margarita is considered a masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian literature. This edition is translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, and features an introduction by Orlando Figes

In Mikhail Bulgakov's imaginative extravaganza, Satan, disguised as a magician, descends upon Moscow in the 1930s with his riotous band, which includes a talking cat and an expert assassin. This visit has several aims, one of which concerns the fate of the Master, an author who has written a novel about Pontius Pilate and is now in a mental hospital.

By turns satiric, fantastic and ironically philosophical, The Master and Margarita constantly surprises and entertains as the action switches back and forth between twentieth-century Moscow and first-century Jerusalem.