Book Club Guide

The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov · 1967 · Classics

Key themes

The Devil as the most honest force in Soviet Moscow
Art, censorship and the price of truth
Cowardice as the greatest sin — Pilate's failure and its echo

About this book

The Devil visits Soviet Moscow with his entourage — a huge black cat, an assassin and others — and wreaks havoc through acts of magic and murder. Interwoven with the Devil's visit is a reimagining of Pontius Pilate's encounter with Yeshua Ha-Notsri. Bulgakov's satirical masterpiece, written under Stalin and published twenty years after his death, is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Written between 1928 and 1940, The Master and Margarita was first published in censored form in the USSR in 1966-67, twenty-six years after Bulgakov's death. The full text was not published until 1973. It is now considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Discussion questions

Woland (the Devil) comes to Moscow and exposes its inhabitants as greedy, cowardly hypocrites. What is Bulgakov saying about the Soviet order — and about what devil worship reveals about a society that has suppressed God?
The novel was written under Stalin and unpublishable — Bulgakov burned the first draft. How does knowing this affect how you read it — and what did Bulgakov risk by writing it at all?
The Pilate sections are entirely different in tone from the Moscow sections. What does Bulgakov achieve through this double narrative — and how do the two stories illuminate each other?
Margarita sells her soul to save the Master. What is Bulgakov saying through this love-sacrifice — about loyalty, about artistic integrity, and about what love requires?
Bulgakov described the novel as his last will and testament. What does he seem to be saying with his final pages — about what endures, what is forgiven, and what cannot be redeemed?