Desolate wrote:
WinterIsComing wrote:
It is about Stalin? That is too depressing for me.
Stalin? Are you mad? :shock:
The story takes place indeed somewhere in the 20s or 30s in USSR, but this is in no way a political book. It's about human nature. It has a big portion of mysticism, but the book only wins from it. It's an amazing piece of art that everyone should read.
A quote from the beginning of the book (I hope my translation won't ruin it):
- And I feel sorry too, - said the stranger, while sparkling with his eye, and continued: - But there is a question that troubles me: if there is no God, then who controls human lives and who controls order in the entire world?
- The man himself does, - Homeless hurried up to answer angrily this not very clear question.
- Pardon, - the stranger softly responded, - but in order to control one must have at least a precise plan for a decent period of time. Allow me to question how a man can control something if he can't engage for his own tomorrow?
<...>
"I should raise an objection this way, - Berlioz thought, - yes, the man is mortal, no one argues against it. But the main thing is..."
But he couldn't finish his idea for the stranger started to speak:
- Yes, the man is mortal, but this is only a half of trouble. Worse is that he is sometimes suddenly mortal, that's the trick! And he can't even say what he is going to do this evening.
- Now, you are wrong here. I know today's evening more or less clearly. That is of course if a brick won't fall on me on Bronnaya street.
- A brick without rhyme or reason, - the stranger interrupted imposingly, - will never fall on anyone. And I personally assure you that it this kind of danger doesn't threaten you. You will die a different death.
EDIT: Oh, and Azrael posted a good link. There you can even read the first few pages of it (the first part of the dialogue that I tried to translate is at the very last page on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0679760806/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-5819288-2386236#reader-page).
Quote:
Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil.
Quote:
This uncensored translation of Bulgakov's posthumously published masterpiece of black magic and black humor restores its sliest digs and sharpest jabs at Stalin's regime, which suppressed it. Writing in a punning, soaring prose thick with contemporary historical references and political irony, Bulgakov (1891-1940) did not make things easy for future translators. The story itself is demanding: the arrival of the Devil and his entourage in Stalin's Moscow frames a Faustian tale of a suppressed writer (the Master) and his devoted lover (his Margarita), set against a realistic narrative?the Master's rejected manuscript?of Pontius Pilate's police state in Jerusalem. An immediate contemporary classic when it was first serialized in Moscow in censored form in 1967-68, the novel suffered in its previous English translations, which were either incomplete or stylistically loose. This new translation, with its accuracy and depth, finally does justice to the politically and verbally outrageous qualities of the original. Careful footnotes explain and contextualize Bulgakov's dense allusions to, and in-jokes about, life under Stalin.
