Reading Order
The Master and Margarita Reading Order
The Master and Margarita (1967, written 1930s–40s) by Mikhail Bulgakov is the great Soviet fantastical novel — a work of such audacity, wit, and spiritual depth that it could only be published twenty-six years after its author's death. The novel interweaves two narrative strands: in 1930s Moscow, the devil Woland arrives with his retinue (a demonic black cat, a naked witch, a silent assassin) and wreaks entertaining havoc on the literary establishment, the housing bureaucracy, and the collective self-deception of Soviet society; simultaneously, in a parallel narrative set in first-century Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate interrogates the itinerant preacher Yeshua Ha-Nozri (Jesus) and sends him to execution despite believing him innocent. The two narratives are connected through the Master, a writer who has written a novel about Pilate and Yeshua and has been broken by the Soviet literary system, and Margarita, the woman who loves him and who agrees to become a witch and hostess of the devil's ball in exchange for the Master's freedom. Bulgakov worked on the novel throughout the darkest years of Stalin's reign, revising it up to his death in 1940 and never seeing it published. The novel is simultaneously a savage satire of Soviet bureaucracy and literary politics, a theological meditation on good and evil (Bulgakov's devil is not simply malevolent — Woland punishes liars, hypocrites, and cowards, and his motto is that he 'is part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good'), and a love story of almost unbearable tenderness. Its final image — the Master and Margarita granted peace rather than light, eternal rest rather than paradise — is one of the most complex and beautiful endings in twentieth-century fiction.
Where to start
The Master and Margarita — the Michael Glenny translation is the classic; the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation (Penguin) is the most recent scholarly version. Start at the beginning and let Woland take you where he will.
Complete The Master and Margarita Book List
- 1Buy
The Master and Margarita (trans. Pevear/Volokhonsky)
Mikhail Bulgakov·1997·Pevear and Volokhonsky's Penguin translation — the most recent scholarly version; their most successful collaboration. - 2Buy
Heart of a Dog
Mikhail Bulgakov·1925·Bulgakov's satirical novella — a stray dog given a human pituitary gland becomes a Soviet bureaucrat; his most purely satirical work and an excellent shorter entry point. - 3Buy
The Nose
Nikolai Gogol·1836·Gogol's absurdist story — the founding work of the Russian fantastical tradition that Bulgakov inherits; a civil servant's nose develops an independent existence. - 4Buy
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol·1842·Gogol's satirical novel of a con man purchasing dead serfs — the great satirical novel of Russian provincial life; Bulgakov's primary Russian satirical ancestor. - 5Buy
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky·1880·Dostoevsky's novel — specifically the 'Grand Inquisitor' chapter, which poses the same question about Christ and freedom that Bulgakov's Pilate-Yeshua strand addresses. - 6Buy
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe·1808·Goethe's drama — Bulgakov's epigraph is from Faust; Woland is a descendant of Mephistopheles; the novel is in constant dialogue with the Faust tradition. - 7Buy
Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen·2011·Allen's film — the same fantastical intrusion of the magical into the contemporary city, the same nostalgic relationship to a creative golden age; the closest popular parallel to Bulgakov's Moscow strand. - 8Buy
Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon·1973·Pynchon's encyclopedic novel — the most ambitious Western parallel to Bulgakov's mixture of historical satire, philosophical depth, and fantastical invention.
The Master and Margarita — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Master and Margarita about?
The Master and Margarita has two main narrative strands that are revealed to be connected. In 1930s Moscow, the devil Woland (accompanied by a huge black cat, a naked witch named Hella, the assassin Azazello, and the jester Koroviev) arrives and causes havoc — exposing the hypocrisy of the Soviet literary establishment, tormenting corrupt bureaucrats, and hosting a spectacular midnight ball for the dead. Meanwhile, in first-century Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate interrogates the wandering philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri (a version of Jesus), comes to believe in his innocence, but lacks the courage to save him. The connection: the Master, a Soviet writer who has written a novel about Pilate and Yeshua, has been destroyed by the literary system; Margarita, his lover, agrees to be hostess of Woland's ball in exchange for the Master's freedom.
Why could The Master and Margarita only be published after Bulgakov's death?
Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita throughout the 1930s under Stalin's increasingly totalitarian regime. The novel's content made it unpublishable: its portrayal of Soviet society (the literary bureaucrats who refuse to publish anything unconventional, the housing committee that bribes people for apartments, the population's superstitious panic when confronted with real magic) is savage satire; its theological content (the Pilate-Yeshua strand presenting Christ as a historical figure of moral authority) was ideologically unacceptable; and its central claim — that evil punishes corruption and hypocrisy, that truth survives even under totalitarianism — was politically dangerous. Bulgakov died in 1940, still revising the novel; his widow Elena preserved the manuscript for twenty years until it was published in a censored version in 1966–67, and in full outside the USSR in 1973.
What is Woland's relationship to good and evil in the novel?
Bulgakov's Woland is one of the most complex devil figures in literature. The novel's epigraph, from Goethe's Faust, introduces him: he is 'part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.' In practice, Woland punishes liars, hypocrites, thieves, and cowards — he restores stolen manuscripts, gives Margarita what she asks for honestly, grants the Master and Margarita peace — while his victims are invariably Soviet citizens who have made themselves comfortable through dishonesty, opportunism, or cruelty. This does not make Woland simply good: his methods are cruel, his ball is populated by murderers and poisoners, and the pleasure he takes in human suffering is real. But Bulgakov uses him to argue that in a world defined by Soviet ideology's official denial of spiritual reality, the only force capable of punishing hypocrisy is a supernatural one that that ideology cannot accommodate.
What does the novel say about cowardice and courage?
Cowardice is the novel's central moral concern. Pilate, the most powerful man in Judea, knows Yeshua is innocent and wants to save him — but lacks the courage to defy the High Priest and the crowd. His punishment is immortality: two thousand years of torment, unable to complete the conversation with Yeshua that his cowardice interrupted. The Master has written a novel about this cowardice and has been broken by the Soviet literary system when it refused to publish his work — he burned his manuscript and retreated into a mental asylum. The novel's argument is that cowardice (which it explicitly calls 'the greatest sin') is not a personal failing but a structural condition that oppressive systems create and exploit: they make courage too costly, and then punish those who were not courageous enough.
What should I read after The Master and Margarita?
After The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov's own Heart of a Dog (1925) and Diaboliad (1923) provide his more purely satirical short fiction. Gogol's Dead Souls and The Overcoat are the Russian satirical tradition Bulgakov inherits. Goethe's Faust — specifically Part One — provides the source material for Woland; the novel makes much more sense having read it. For Soviet-era fantastical literature, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (1924) and Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit (1930) are essential. For the Pilate-Yeshua strand's theological dimension, Jorge Luis Borges's stories about Judas and Pilate in Labyrinths are interesting companions.
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