welcome to...THE MASTER AND MARCHARITA!another excellent title + month pun, another paragon of literature added to my currently reading at the beginning of the month...you know what that means. IT'S ANOTHER PROJECT LONG CLASSIC INSTALLMENT (in which i read long classics segmented into smaller chunks over the course of a month to make them manageable). and this one is ordained from the heavens.my friend asked me if i had ever read this book as we stood in the middle of a three-story barnes & ...

Soviet Ghost StoriesStories, stories, all is stories: political stories, religious stories, scientific stories, even stories about stories. We live inside these stories. Like this one in The Master and Margarita. The story that we can more or less agree upon we call reality. But is it real?Story-making and telling is what we do as human beings. Through stories we create meaning out of thin air, in the same way that plants create their food from light, and usually with about the same level of cas...

مزخرف یعنی این: از لحاظ تازگی درجه دوتازگی تنها یک درجه دارد؛ درجه اول و آخرش یکی استاین کتاب نمایشی است از تقابل راستی و دروغ در جامعه روسیه استالین جامعه روسیه را دروغ و دزدی و تظاهر فرا گرفته و روشنفکران و منتقدان و نویسندگان هم به این کار دامن می زننداز آنان بیشتر از این انتظاری نمی توان داشتبا حقوق و مزایای زیادی که از دولت می گیرند و خانه گاریبایدوف(محل کلوب ...نویسندگان وابسته به دولت) با آن غذاهای اعلا و ارزان، برنده شدن آپارتمان و به قول دو زیردست ابلیس، این نویسندگان مانند آناناس در گر...

Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn’t so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other… I experienced this magical novel as an unrivalled ode to love and reveled in its delectable burlesque and hilarious scenes. It knocked me off my feet and pointed...

There was something devilish and demonic in the time itself so the devil with his demons descended unto the capital city.First of all, the man described did not limp on any leg, and was neither short nor enormous, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side and gold on the right. He was wearing an expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carried a stick with a black knob shaped li...

A poet "Homeless" as he calls himself, and a magazine editor his gruff boss, Berlioz, are having a conversation in a quiet, nondescript Moscow park before the start of the Second World War. Drinking, just harmless sodas and discussing business, ordinary right? That's the last time in this novel it is. An apparition appears in the sky, weird and unbelievable, a frightening seven foot transparent man is seen floating above their heads, but only Berlioz spots it, he's obviously the editor, a very s...

The Chicago Tribune wrote: “The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative and poignant, and everywhere full of rich descriptive passages.”Hilarious and contemplative my ass, CT. This book is an interminable slog.Look, here’s the deal. I get that this book satirizes 1930s Stalinist Russia, and I get that—for some—this earns The Master and Margarita a place on their “works-of-historical-importance” shelves. But for me, it earns nothing. I mean, let’s just call a spade a spade, shall we...

This review is dedicated to Mary, the very model of a perfect co-moderator and GR friend.Unlocking the Meaning of The Master and MargaritaMikhail BulgakovIn the decades following the publication of The Master and Margarita, myriad critics have attempted to find a key to unlock the meaning of Bulgakov’s unfinished masterwork. Some viewed the novel as a political roman à clef, laboriously substituting historical figures from Stalinist Moscow for Bulgakov’s characters. Others posited a religious fo...

‘All power is violence over people.’Mikhail Bulgakov, who is no stranger to the pale fire of a burning manuscript, has created a masterpiece of fiction that truly cannot be burned. Having been completed, but not fully edited, by the time of Bulgakov’s demise, this novel survived Soviet censorship and the test of time to remain one of the foremost Russian novels of the 20th century, and still holds relevance in today’s world. From political intrigue and scathing social satire to religious comment...

I'm staying home from work today, sick to the extreme, and it's only in that unique feverish clarity that comes with illness that I dare to even try to write about this book.This is THE book. The one that all the other books are measured against. The one that I've read more times since I was twelve than the number of books some people I know have read in their entire lives. The one from which I've memorized entire passages. This is it, the golden standard, the masterpiece, the unattainable perfe...