António Pescada Books

One of the great imaginative novels of the century, a fierce political satire, filled with the most dazzling surreal humour. The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by two demons, a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, remain undiminished. The Master and Margarita is Bulgakov's last and most celebrated novel, completed in 1938 at the height of Stalin's purges and published for the first time in Russia in 1966.

Fate sends two star-crossed lovers, Sasha and Volodenka, on two separate journeys across space and time. Sasha finds herself as a young woman in a time not far from the present day. Volodenka finds himself as a young soldier in a horrific conflict at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet, despite their cosmic schism, their letters still reach one another; as he helps her to come to terms with life and she helps him to come to terms with death. Half male, half female; half exploration of the physical and the immediate, half meditation on the intangible and the infinite, The Light and the Dark is a literary feat as balanced and beautiful as it is prodigious and profound.