The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

It’s stunning that, despite its scads of esoterica, Gnosticism, and descriptions of the minutiae of daily life and bureaucracy in Soviet Russia, Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” still manages to be captivating and hilarious, chapter after chapter.

The plot begins simply enough. Satan decides to visit Moscow, arrives, and shortly thereafter decapitates one of the first people he meets—a man who, like all dutifully atheistic Soviets, refuses to believe in the Dark Lord’s existence. With a supernatural and motley crew that includes a scantily clad witch-maid and an enormous, talking, sarcastic cat named Behemoth, Satan spreads chaos throughout the city, befuddling bureaucrats and toying with the populace’s deepest yearnings for consumer goods.

Meanwhile, a character known only as the Master, condemned to live in a mental institution after writing a historical account of Jesus’s crucifixion—a book that becomes a meta-novel within the text—breaks out to serve as the hero. He yearns for the love of his former muse and mistress, Margarita. She, in turn, makes a Faustian deal with Satan to reunite with her long lost love. What ensues is absurd, intricate, and absolute unforgettable.

The book is simultaneously a fairy tale, an epic, a religious allegory, a political satire, and, primarily, a harrowing romance. Yet, despite it’s amalgam of genres, it always maintains a riveting, almost Chekhovian balance between the hilarious and the tragic.

For a book that Bulgakov began writing in 1928, only to be published posthumously in a heavily censored 1966 edition, the book still feels vibrant and relevant today. Harvard students, living in a relatively atheistic—or, at best, agnostic—community, the questions raised in the book about the nature and need of faith reverberate strongly. And aside from the philosophical scintillation the book provides, it’s just downright entertaining.