this has been my favorite book (and favorite author) for quite a while now and it doesn’t look like it’s getting bumped from that position anytime soon. The Master and Margarita is a fantasy, a tragedy, a comedy and a history all in one. It is the crowning work of Bulgakov’s short, repressed life and in it is contained all the suffering, longing, yearning and desire that he was never allowed to express under the suffocating influence of Soviet controlled Moscow. But it also is a story of hope, of the triumph of love over even the fires of hell, but also the triumph of truth and literature over the fires of censorship. In the midst of all this, it is outrageously and uproariously funny in its own darkly dry way. The Master and Margarita contains everything. It is the story of one man’s life and also the story of the entire human experience. It is the story of hopes crushed and hopes realized. And finally, it is the story of the deeply human hope to in the last days of life be granted not light, for that is too much to ask, but simply peace. To visit our friends, listen to music in the evenings, to no longer feel the crushing burden of existence pressing down on our shoulders. Read it, friends! You won’t regret it.