Another book that I am kinda surprised ended up on my to read list. It is a Penguin classic, which has me even more surprised. I am no expert, but I believe that this was published in chunks in Russia in the 60s and is a flavor of satire making fun of society at the time.
The book starts with two men talking on a bench. A third approaches them and is quite mysterious and cagey about his motives. A few fantastic things happen, including that one of the men dies, as predicted by the mysterious stranger. The other (a poet) loses it and takes off after the stranger, his companion, and a cat that joins them.
There's a few interspersed chapters that then take place in Jerusalem and center on Pontius Pilate sentencing Jesus to death. We eventually return to our poor poet chasing the devil around, he ends up in an institution and we learn that the devil is in the man he killed's room and staying in Moscow for a bit. In the mental institution our poet meets the master, he was working on a novel about Pilate and in love with a woman married to someone else.
She loves him as well, and we swap to her for a bit. This is Margarita, she has a wild night where she gets cream from an associate of the devil and rubs it all over herself making her young, beautiful, and able to fly. She zooms off to the devil and his friends and ends up hostess of one of his balls. As a thank you she requests to be reunited with the master. They are, and in the end the two get peace together. The devil and his friends then leave Moscow and there's a brief epilogue detailing how the poet still visits the bench he was at with his friend at the beginning.
The book is surprisingly extremely amusing and engaging, there is humor throughout it. A bit part of this is that no one is really telling the truth, there's layers of deception everywhere. So the characters can get into amusing situations. The poet's downfall is honestly ridiculous, and Margarita's flight as well. I skipped this in the summary but she trashes someone's apartment on her way out and that's incredible for her.
I'm not well-versed in the history of this time, but it is absolutely a response and satire of religious discourse of Russia. Otherwise why would the devil go there? From what I gather online, Russia was forced atheist and this was a satire in terms of people rejecting the historical figure of Jesus Christ and uplifting free thought and opinions. In the book you can be locked up for writing fiction even! The master in particular is shunned by the writing establishment and is thought to be a little biographical for Bulgakov. This is contrasted with the poet who is successful initially but is convinced to give it up.
I quite liked this book, I thought it was delightfully easy to read. I am sure that I didn't understand everything going on, I probably would need more information about Russia at the time to do that. But I thought is was amusing and resonated a lot with being at a crossroads in my life now. I look forward to coming back to it later and being able to pick up on more aspects I missed in my first go.
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