I finally finished Master and Margarita. What a strange book.

It’s worth reading for its weirdness. There seems to be two main plots. 1) The devil comes to town with a small squad of assistants. He has a magic show where he gives away money and women’s clothes. Then the money turns into something worthless or illegal, and the clothes disappear and women are suddenly naked in the streets, the men are arrested for illegal currency or they’re just out the money. And everybody thinks everybody is crazy.

And 2) Master, who wrote a book and most of it was destroyed except Margarita has a small section. Master is in a psyche ward in a basement. (I don’t know why his name is Master)

Margarita is in an unhappy marriage, and because of the devil, becomes a witch to become queen of the devil’s crazy party, where dead people come out of a fire in a huge fireplace. Margarita loved Master but thinks he must be dead.

After the party, the devil reunites Master and Margarita, gives them a complete copy of Masters book. He then has them both killed and brought back to life. This cures Master of his insanity and apparently he and Margarita live happily ever after.

Then the devil and his assistants (mostly his assistants) basically burn the place down as they are leaving.

And there’s a lot more to it than that. I didn’t get from the book, but read in a review, that the devil was punishing people for being greedy but they didn’t seem too greedy to me. If money rained from the sky, I’d pick up all I could. What woman wouldn’t take the latest, greatest fashions in clothing of offered?

It was a weird book, weird . It was written in the 1930s but didn’t get published until 1966, because, well, you know, Russia. But to me the overall tone of the book was pro Russian 1930s government. Apparently the Russian government was confiscating people’s cash and valuables and not turning yours in was punishable

You gotta read it and tell me what you think…