Mikhail Bulgakovs "The Master and Margarita" is a fiercely satirical fantasy that remained unpublished in its authors home country for over thirty years. This "Penguin Classics" edition is translated with an introduction by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the acclaimed translators of Tolstoys Anna Karenina. In Soviet Moscow, God is dead, but the devil - to say nothing of his retinue of demons, from a loudmouthed, gun-toting tomcat, to the fanged fallen angel Koroviev - is very much alive.

As death and destruction spread through the city like wildfire, condemning Moscows cultural elite to prison cells and body bags, only a madman, the "Master and Margarita", his beautiful, courageous lover, can hope to end the chaos. Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalins reign and circulated in samizdat form for decades, when "The Master and the Margarita" was finally published it became an overnight literary phenomenon, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere.

This luminous translation from the complete and unabridged Russian text is accompanied by an introduction by Richard Pevear exploring the extraordinary circumstances of the novels composition and publication, and how Bulgakov drew on carnivalesque folk traditions to create his ironic subversion of Soviet propaganda. This edition also contains a list of further reading and a note on the text. After finishing high school, Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) entered the Medical School of Kiev University, graduating in 1916. He wrote about his experiences as a doctor in his early works "Notes of a Young Country Doctor".

His later works treated the subject of the artist and the tyrant under the guise of historical characters, but "The Master and Margarita" is generally considered his masterpiece. If you enjoyed "The Master and Margarita", you might like Jonathan Swifts "Gullivers Travels", also available in "Penguin Classics". "One of the great novels of the 20th century, a scary, darkly comic allegory". ("Daily Telegraph").