The Master and Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov | Reader’s Companion | Coleman’s Notes CN-065
What happens when the Devil arrives in Moscow?
Mikhail Bulgakov begins with a seemingly ordinary conversation at Patriarch’s Ponds.
Within hours, one man is dead, another has been confined to a psychiatric clinic, and a mysterious foreign professor and his extraordinary companions are beginning to turn Moscow upside down.
That professor is Woland.
His companions include Behemoth, an enormous talking black cat with a taste for chaos; the bizarre Koroviev; and the dangerous Azazello.
Yet this is much more than a supernatural comedy.
At its heart is the story of the Master, a writer whose novel about Pontius Pilate has been attacked and suppressed, and Margarita, the woman who refuses to abandon him.
Margarita’s search for the Master ultimately brings her into Woland’s world, transforming her into a witch and culminating in one of the novel’s most spectacular sequences — Satan’s great ball.
Running alongside these events is the Master’s haunting story of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Notsri, in which political authority, personal conscience and fear collide.
The Coleman’s Notes® Reader’s Companion guides you through all three worlds and shows how Bulgakov brings them together.
Explore Woland, the Master, Margarita, Behemoth, Ivan, Pilate and Yeshua alongside the novel’s treatment of censorship, artistic freedom, political conformity, good and evil, love, cowardice, justice, mercy, madness and the supernatural.
The guide contains an Extended Plot Summary and substantial chapter-by-chapter coverage of all 32 chapters plus the Epilogue, together with detailed character studies, Ten Major Themes, Eight Extended Close Readings, symbols and motifs, the novel-within-the-novel, Faust and literary allusion, Bulgakov and Stalin-era censorship, a Translation & Edition Guide, critical interpretations, comparative study ideas, 50 Reading and Discussion Questions, Ten Key Episodes, Twenty Key Concepts and Quick Revision & Recall.
Whether encountering Bulgakov for the first time or returning to the novel, this companion is designed to help you move beyond simply following its extraordinary plot towards understanding how and why the novel works.
Digital Reader’s Companion — £7.95
Russian Literature Collection 2
A Hero of Our Time • Dead Souls • Eugene Onegin • The Bronze Horseman • The Master and Margarita • Doctor Zhivago
Individual price: £7.95 each
Six separately: £47.70
Collection price: £42.95
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READ • REFLECT • EXPLORE • UNDERSTAND
