Mistr a Markétka – Bulgakov Michail Afanasjevič (2020)

The world-famous novel The Master and Margarita, which Russian prose writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) began working on in the late 1920s and completed, utterly exhausted and nearly blind, just a few days before his death, belongs to the golden fund of world literature and is rightly considered one of the most remarkable literary works of the 20th century. Although it began to take shape nearly a hundred years ago, it remains a vibrant work – a work that continues to enchant and even fascinate readers for generations. The Master and Margarita can be characterized as a multi-layered magical-realist fantastical grotesque set against the thoroughly real – and from today’s perspective, completely absurd – conditions that prevailed in the Soviet Union at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. It can be read as a masterful satire on contemporary order, but also as an ingenious variation on the Faustian theme, a quirky philosophical allegory, and above all as a gripping story of the never-ending clash between good and evil, guilt and innocence, courage and cowardice, which not only provides us with an extraordinary reading experience but also prompts us to seek answers to the fundamental questions of human existence alongside the author. Mikhail…