For our next selection we’re going back to Russia. Written in the 30s but not published till the 60s, this time we’re going to Soviet era Russia. Moscow’s literary elite are being targeted by the devil and his henchmen…a parallel one could draw to the current crop of Russian elite whose success has come through corruption at the expense of so many.
Our author, Mikhail Bulgakov, incredibly managed to write a novel
full of humor in 1930s Soviet Russia. Although he did not live to see recognition
for his greatest work, its significance is still apparent today. As the
novelist Viktor Pelevin once said, it’s almost impossible to explain to anyone
who has not lived through Soviet life exactly what this novel meant to people.
We’ve got the devil, Pontius Pilate, giant talking cats,
insane asylums, witches, and naked dancing. A book described as “the most
breathtakingly original piece of work” and also one that “few books can match for
weirdness.” It is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest novels of the 20th
century and as a masterpiece of magical realism, but it’s very common even for
people who are very well read not to have heard of it. To that point, I had
never heard of it either until I went down a rabbit hole and repeatedly found
this book mentioned as the benchmark to which so many book reviewers compared
all the others.
My dear brothers, I invite you in to the inner circle. Let
us join the elite of the well read and absorb “The Master and Margarita” to our
collective consciousness.
No comments:
Post a Comment