The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov · 1930
The Devil visits Stalin-era Moscow and chaos ensues. Bulgakov wrote it knowing it could never be published in his lifetime; the manuscript was completed around 1940, not published until 1966. The satire is savage, the love story is transcendent, and the magical realism is total.
The case against
Bulgakov died before finishing his revisions, and the seams show: the Master drifts in halfway through as a cipher, Margarita's devotion is asserted more than built, and the satire spends its best jokes on housing committees and a literary bureaucracy you now need footnotes to hate properly. The Pilate novel and the Moscow circus keep interrupting each other throughout.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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