Or — reserve in shop for pickup at 72 Bowery Lane.
Bulgakov's masterwork, finished in secret over twelve years and unpublished in his lifetime — now in the celebrated Pevear & Volokhonsky translation.
One spring afternoon in Moscow, the Devil arrives at Patriarch's Ponds, accompanied by a giant black cat who plays chess, drinks vodka, and quotes Pushkin. By dawn, two men are dead, the editor of a literary journal is missing his head, and the city's most prominent atheist is lying about his beliefs.
So begins Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita — a satire so total it loops back into reverence. Written under Stalin, hidden under floorboards, and not published until twenty-six years after the author's death, the novel braids three stories into one: the Devil's visit to godless Moscow, the love affair between the Master and Margarita, and Pontius Pilate's fateful encounter with a wandering philosopher in Jerusalem.
This new edition presents Pevear and Volokhonsky's celebrated translation in a slipcased hardcover, printed on uncoated cream stock with French folds and ribbon marker. The text is set in 11.5pt Granjon, with marginalia restored from Bulgakov's final manuscript and a new introductory essay by Maya Reyes for Entiquity.
What survives this novel — what Bulgakov insisted survives anything — is what cannot be unwritten. Not the regime, not the censor, not even death. The manuscript, in the end, comes back. Margarita comes back. The reader, having read, comes back changed.
A satire of such reach and tenderness it makes Kafka look polite. Pevear and Volokhonsky have given us the version that finally sings.
I read it once a decade and find a new novel in it each time. This edition is the one I will give as a gift for the next ten years.
If a single book could justify the existence of literature itself, it might be this one. The cat alone is worth the price of admission.