the master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov

Their leader, Woland, presents himself as a stage performer of black magic. In the first, a quartet of unusual characters appear, unannounced, in Moscow.

He even allowed Bulgakov to write, but his novels went unpublished and his plays unperformed.īulgakov worked on The Master and Margarita from 1928 until dying from a genetically transmitted kidney disease, in 1940. Stalin denied Bulgakov permission to emigrate - but, having been enough of a fan to see one of his plays 15 times, did not have him winterized in Siberia or killed. His literary career, which began in 1921, was virtually over by 1929, due to Soviet censorship. He was, at various times, severely wounded, struck by typhus, addicted to morphine, and subject to mental breakdowns. Bulgakov quit med school to serve in World War I, with the white army during the Civil War, and the Ukranian Nationalists after that. His grandfathers had been priests, and his father was a professor of theology. Mikhail Bulgakov was born in 1891 in Kiev. The author’s story alone compels a second look. It supposedly influenced Mick Jagger’s composition of “Sympathy for the Devil,” and Baz Luhrmann has been pitching a film version of it for years.

It inspired cinematic adaptations (German, Yugoslavian, Russian, Hungarian, Israeli) and works for TV (Russian and Polish), the stage, ballet, orchestra, opera, and musical comedy.

The master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov