The Master and Margarita

Originally published posthumously in 1966, ‘The Master and Margarita’ has been called one of the masterpieces and the best-selling Russian novels of the 20th century by Mikhail Bulgakov, a Russian writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. The novel’s vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author’s lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.
At the intersection of fantasy and realism, satire and unflinching emotional truths, Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic novel eloquently lampoons every aspect of Soviet life under Stalin’s regime, from politics to art to religion, while interrogating the complexities between good and evil, innocence and guilt, and freedom and oppression.
Spanning from Moscow to Biblical Jerusalem, a vibrant cast of characters—a “magician” who is actually the devil in disguise, a giant cat, a witch, a fanged assassin—sow mayhem and madness wherever they go, mocking artists, intellectuals, and politicians alike. In and out of the fray weaves a man known only as the Master, a writer demoralized by government censorship, and his mysterious lover, Margarita.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Russian: Михаил Булгаков) was a Russian writer, medical doctor, and playwright. His novel The Master and Margarita, published posthumously, has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
He also wrote the novel The White Guard and the plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight (also called The Run), and The Days of the Turbins. He wrote mostly about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War.
Some of his works (Flight, all his works between the years 1922 and 1926, and others) were banned by the Soviet government, and personally by Joseph Stalin, after it was decided by them that they "glorified emigration and White generals". On the other hand, Stalin loved The Days of the Turbins (also called The Turbin Brothers) very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.