The Master and Margarita

The devil himself appears in Stalin's Moscow, disguised as a magician and accompanied by various demons (including a naked girl and a huge black cat who packs a gun), in Mikhail Bulgakov's acidly satirical masterpiece. They succeed in comically befuddling a population that denies the devil's existence, even as it is confronted with the diabolic results of his handiwork. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil's onslaught. In this wild ride, by turns fantastic and ironically philosophical (and suppressed until a quarter-century after Bulgakov's death), the story switches back and forth between 1930s Moscow and 1st-century Jerusalem. This edition offers commentary and an afterword that provide new insight into the mysterious subtexts of the novel, revealing Bulgakov's crowning work in all its complexity.