Russia¿s literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman ¿ a professor of black magic ¿ arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil himself, come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of a disbelieving capital. But the Devil¿s mission quickly becomes entangled with the fate of the Master ¿ a man who has turned his back on his former life and taken refuge in a lunatic asylum ¿ and his past lover, Margarita. Both a satirical romp and a daring analysis of the nature of good and evil, innocence and guilt, <i>The Master and Margarita</i> is the crowning achievement of one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century.