The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov: Goodreads Review

  Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is a highly imaginative novel about human fear living in a police state, the sorry state of writers in Stalin’s Russia, the importance of imagination to survive, and, well, just about everything else. Even the tale of Jesus and Pontius Pilot, the author’s story within the story, is turned on its head, as if to say we survive by shaping truth into whatever form we need at the moment.

But most of all, the novel is a wild romp in the woods. Woland, the devil – an incorrigible trickster – is pulling fast ones on just about everybody. Through his never tiring sleight of hand, shit happens: a tram runs over the head of Moscow’s literary club; Margarita flies naked through the air, Moscow’s Variety Theatre rains money on the theatre-goers, and the devil’s cat, the obscenity-mouthing Behemoth walks on two legs, drinks vodka, and plays chess.

Sometimes I thought I’d wandered into a cabaret, which is fine, unless you’re expecting a night at the opera. It’s all good fun; but, as it is said about eating a bowl of pasta, you feel hungry an hour later. Why, for example, is the devil playing dirty tricks on good people as well as bad? Where is the Faustian bargain that elevates Goethe’s work to a masterpiece? Why are there so many characters. Every time we begin to get inside the head of one, he or she exits left and a new character takes centerstage. By the middle of the novel, I was desperate for it to shift into a lower gear – one where I could reflect on the scenery and find some deeper meaning.

I do believe there are hidden treasures buried within the novel – truths about Soviet society, censorship and the psychological toll it takes on writers, and about God and the devil. But somehow, the dazzle of it all blinded me. But, as I said earlier, maybe I was expecting a night at the opera when I should have known I was walking into a cabaret.