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Classics

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Sandra Woien interrogates a famous Soviet-era satire.

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was a Russian physician turned playwright and novelist. His masterpiece The Master and Margarita (1966) took him twelve years to write. At one point he ended up burning the manuscript in a fit of despair – just as his protagonist the Master does to his own masterpiece in the novel. Yet, it took even longer for the book to be published. Due to the strict censorship of Soviet society, an entire twenty-six years after his death passed before the public saw it.

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