Goodreads | Sean's review

Sean's review

The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog.

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117833.The_Master_and_Margarita?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Master and Margarita" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1212617160m/117833.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117833.The_Master_and_Margarita?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Master and Margarita</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3873.Mikhail_Bulgakov">Mikhail Bulgakov</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/18968718?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 3 of 5 stars<br/>I'd love to say I loved this book, especially as I was really looking forward to it as one of the masterpieces of 20th Century Russian modernism. I'm crazy about all that Eastern European surrealist stuff but somehow although I appreciated the warped picture it provided of Russian life under the Soviet system (more than justifying any amount of surrealism), it just didn't hang together for me as a story, which being an author myself is one of my preconceptions of how fiction should function. Maybe I'm just misguided, but it's a bit tough when the major characters don't appear till halfway through the book. Still we get to spend time with both Jesus and the Devil in the flesh, and in the end Satan turns out to be not such a bad guy after all. He's just, more or less, got a job to do. So if this sounds like an interesting premise, check it out. It's definitely a must read for any serious student of Russian literature, and Bulgakov's personal history is fascinating -- he was protected during his lifetime, despite various purgings of the literati, by Stalin himself, who strangely enough happened to love one of Bulgakov's plays he'd seen performed. Meanwhile Bulgakov, who knew he was dying young of some terminal disease (I think it was TB, as usual, but I'm not sure) was working on his subversive masterpiece, which had not the slightest chance of being published under the Soviet system. Somehow the manuscript survived and was, remarkably, published decades later in the 1960's during a brief thaw in the authoritarian climate. It created a major sensation in the literary world of the time, particularly in its home country, only to be banned again. But the damage had been done -- many 'Bulgakovisms' leaked into the popular culture of the time, somewhat as lines from Shakespeare have leaked into our popular vernacular in the west, demonstrating once again the power of literature to make a difference... 
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1035053?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Sean's review
rating:
recommended for: Readers interested in Russia, recent Russian history, and Russian literature

I'd love to say I loved this book, especially as I was really looking forward to it as one of the masterpieces of 20th Century Russian modernism. I'm crazy about all that Eastern European surrealist stuff but somehow although I appreciated the warped picture it provided of Russian life under the Soviet system (more than justifying any amount of surrealism), it just didn't hang together for me as a story, which being an author myself is one of my preconceptions of how fiction should function. Maybe I'm just misguided, but it's a bit tough when the major characters don't appear till halfway through the book. Still we get to spend time with both Jesus and the Devil in the flesh, and in the end Satan turns out to be not such a bad guy after all. He's just, more or less, got a job to do. So if this sounds like an interesting premise, check it out. It's definitely a must read for any serious student of Russian literature, and Bulgakov's personal history is fascinating -- he was protected dur...more

Like this review? yes flag

comments (showing 0-0 of 0)

newest »

date

all Sean's books »