This is one of the finest novels known to me. Plenty has been written about this classic work, so all that is left for me is to offer a few random thoughts that I observed upon my second reading of the book.
What strikes me as remarkable is that it is a predominantly visual novel. Dr. Bulgakov writes like a movie scriptwriter. It seems important for him that the cities in question (Jerusalem in time of Pilates and Moscow in the 1930ies) are conveyed graphically and that the plethora of characters is just as vivid to us. Many scenes feel more like scenes from a play translated to prose than scenes of a novel. It is understandable that parts of the novel took shape in the author’s head as theatre pieces, since Dr. Bulgakov was an active dramatist. At the same time and in spite of all these descriptions, The Master and Margarita is easily the fastest-paced book I had read in a while, and this is saying a lot for a book written in the 1930ies. A reader can go through its 400 plus pages in a few days, feeling refreshed after every reading.
Satan’s adventures in Moscow are hugely entertaining and imaginative. Several scenes, most notably the Satan’s bal, remind me of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch. The story of Pilates and the execution of the ragged Ha-Nofri (Jesus) are beautiful. The supposed author of the story of Pilates, The Master, and his love affair with Margarita, is just as pretty and romantic. The stories do not intertwine in regular intervals, they intertwine exactly as they should to keep the reader stuck in Bulgakov’s world.
As hard as I tried I could not come up with a single objection to the style and the delivery of the novel – so I ended up wondered a bit about the meaning, or the thoughts that could’ve driven the writer. In a way, it seems it is a religious novel. It opens with the conversation between the poet and his editor, who are both hard-core atheists. Not only do they deny the existence of God, they also deny the historical existence of Jesus. After only a page or so, Satan presents himself and joins their conversation. After another page or so the editor is decapitated by a streetcar and the whirlwind that is this novel begins. The rest of the novel seems to serve as a response to their opening conversation. However, I do not get the feeling that Dr. Bulgakov is religious. Firstly, his main protagonist is Satan, and he is the almighty. He interacts with the ‘other side,’ with Jesus and his gang, by means of messengers, and they exchange information and decide together on what to do. Not only does he, 
his entourage, Jesus, and the rest of the usual deities have eternal lives, but also a bunch of other people including Pilates. At the end of the book, The Master and the Margarita are also awarded immortality. Margarita’s maid is, upon her own request, also given powers and made into a which. All of this gives me the feeling of someone who is playfully using some motives from the history of Christian religion, rather than being pious and respectful about religion.
One can imagine Bulgakov having a similar conversation about atheism himself, and at some point having a thought enter his mind and ask him: ‘What if Satan come here and proved us wrong?”
What followed such an unfortunate (for him, fortunate for us) thought was 11 years of hard work on his masterpiece, and the harsh destiny of being sanctioned by the regime and not living to see one’s work published.
