The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
While mid-20th century Russian propaganda wizards were twisting words to hide the truth, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a response that proved fantasy could be used to reveal wisdom rather than confuse it.
An absolute feast of a book, The Master and Margarita serves up a delicious variety of characters and scenarios — naked witches, talking cats, and a devil’s ball — as a less-than-subtle riposte to communist cant. In the process, Bulgakov simultaneously subverts the doctrine of his day, declaring the universal power of the written word to have a staying power government ideology can never achieve.
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