Book of Month: January 2021

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

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Publisher: Dar Almada
Year: 2015

The Master and Margarita, Russian Master i Margarita, novel by Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, written in 1928–40 and published in a censored form in the Soviet Union in 1966–67. The unexpurgated version was published there in 1973. Witty and ribald, the novel is at the same time a penetrating philosophical work that wrestles with profound and eternal problems of good and evil. It is considered a 20th-century masterpiece.
Two arabic translation were undertaken in 1986 by Youssef Halak and another by Ibrahim Shukr.

When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a pyschiatric hospital, while his d  evoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov’s dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita’s enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time.

The full video of our discussion on " The Master and Margarita " which took place on Saturday January 23 , 2021 , may be viewed here