Friday Friyay: 'The Master & Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov

Happy Friday! I can't believe it's almost Christmas... where did the year go? So much has changed for me this year that it's hard to understand, but it's all good things so I can just be grateful! I don't think I'm going to make my reading challenge this year, but I'm very very close and hope to at least finish some of the books I've still got going so I can start fresh into the new year! Edit: Just posted my Favourite Reads of 2022 post, do hop over if you have the time!

Currently I'm rereading one of my all-time favourites, The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It's such a stunning, absurd, tragic, and hilarious book. Bulgakov faced a lot of censorship and oppression in the USSR and the book was only published, heavily edited, after his death. It's a masterpiece though!

As a mysterious gentleman and self-proclaimed magician arrives in Moscow, followed by a most bizarre retinue of servants - which includes a strangely dressed ex-choirmaster, a fanged hitman and a mischievous tomcat with the gift of the gab - the Russian literary world is shaken to its foundations. It soon becomes lear that he is the Devil, and that he has come to wreak havoc aomong the cultural elite of the disbelieving capital. But the Devil's mission quickly becomes entangled with the fate of the Master - the author of an unpublished historical novel about Pontius Pilate - who has turned his back on real life and his lover Margarita, finding shelter in a lunatic asylum after traumatic publishers' rejections, vilification in the press and political persecution.

Will the Devil manage to enlist the fiery Margarita into his ranks, will she remain faithful to the Master to the very end and come to his resue? At the same time a satirical romp and a daring analysis of the nature of good and evil, innocence and guilt, The Master and Margarita is the crowning achievement of one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century.

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.

BB:

'Part One: 
1. Never Talk to Strangers

At the hour of the hot spring sunset at Patriarch's Ponds two citizens appeared. The first of them - some forty years old and dressed in a nice grey summer suit - was short, well fed and bald; he carried his respectable pork-pie hat in his hand, and had a neatly shaved face adorned by spectacles of supernatural proportions in black horn frames. The second - a broad-shouldered, gingery, shock-headed young man with a checked cloth cap cocked towards the back of his head - was wearing a cowboy shirt, crumpled white trousers and black soft shoes.' p.3

I could have gone on for every with this quote because there are so many details which paint such a clear picture of who these people are that once they start speaking you feel you already know them. Bulgakov had such a talent for capturing a person's character through their small movements or the details of their appearance that it makes The Master & Margarita feel like a cinematic experience.

F56:

'Part One
5. There Were Goings-on at Griboyedov

"He could have telephoned!" cried Deniskin, Glukharev and Kvant. 
Ah, they cried unjustly: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not have telephoned anywhere. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a huge hall lit by thousand-candle bulbs, on three zinc tables there lay what had until only recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich.' p.56

While perhaps a little graphic, this is actually kind of hilarious in the book. See, the two men introduced in the beginning are an editor and a poet. one of these meets an unfortunate end at the hands of the Devil, which isn't a spoiler, but it takes a while for that news to hit the rest of the literary scene, who is gathered at Griboyedov. And so they complain about where Mikhail is, not realising he is dead. While harsh, this whole scene is a perfect parody of the self-important and pretentious literary scene that had me laughing out loud! Please, read The Master and Margarita!

BBH:

This week's question comes from Billy himself:

Did Santa bring you any books?

Nooo *insert crying face emoji* I did ask for two books, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine and The Oleander Sword by Tasha Shuri, but I also asked for one of those standmixers so I can become a baking whizz once again. And my family has kindly gifted me the mixer, which I appreciate since it's a bigger purchase I'd hesitate to make myself. The books I will most definitely end up buying for myself anyway xD 

Did you get any books? And what do you think of The Master & Margarita? It is honestly one of my absolute favourites in a very real way!