Mikhail and Margarita, Julie Lekstrom Himes
Mikhail and Margarita, Julie Lekstrom Himes
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Mikhail and Margarita

Author: Julie Lekstrom Himes

Narrator: Michael Goldstrom

Unabridged: 12 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 03/14/2017


Synopsis

It is 1933 and Mikhail Bulgakov's enviable career is on the brink of being dismantled. His friend and mentor, the poet Osip Mandelstam, has been arrested, tortured, and sent into exile. Meanwhile, a mysterious agent of the secret police has developed a growing obsession with exposing Bulgakov as an enemy of the state. To make matters worse, Bulgakov has fallen in love with the dangerously candid Margarita. Facing imminent arrest, and infatuated with Margarita, he is inspired to write his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, a scathing novel critical of both power and the powerful.

Ranging between lively readings in the homes of Moscow's literary elite to the Siberian Gulag, Mikhail and Margarita recounts a passionate love triangle while painting a portrait of a country whose towering literary tradition is at odds with a dictatorship that does not tolerate dissent. Margarita is a strong, idealistic, seductive woman who is fiercely loved by two very different men, both of whom will fail in their attempts to shield her from the machinations of a regime hungry for human sacrifice. Debut novelist Julie Lekstrom Himes launches a rousing defense of art and the artist during a time of systematic deception, and she movingly portrays the ineluctable consequences of love for one of history's most enigmatic literary figures.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kathleen on December 11, 2019

I read "The Master and Margarita" in college as part of a 20th-century Russian literature class. Set off by socialist-realist Gorky, sentimental Pasternak and grim Zamyatin, Bulgakov's masterpiece leaped off the page like a satanic cat. That anyone could ever write a such a mixture of deadpan polit......more

Goodreads review by Claudia on August 17, 2018

Imaginem o autor d'O Mestre e Margarita como protagonista de um livro. Agora imaginem que ele se apaixona pela Margarita que por acaso é amante do seu melhor amigo preso por questões políticas. Temos o fio condutor deste livro. Uma história passada em 1933, numa atmosfera sombria da Rússia estalinis......more

Goodreads review by John on February 15, 2018

As I mentioned on this site a few weeks ago in connection with The Fatal Eggs, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita was one of the books that, so to speak, marked a turning-point in my life when I read it in my late teens or early twenties. (I really must read it again, after all these ye......more

Goodreads review by Tony on January 21, 2017

I've always loved the idea of "The Master and Margarita." The devil comes to Moscow with an entourage that includes a naked witch and a giant talking cat! But to be honest, I struggled through it, never really unlocking its magic. Julie Lekstrom Himes has not only unlocked Bulgakov's magic, she has......more

Goodreads review by Mari on March 04, 2017

Inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic, Master and Margarita, in Mikhail and Margarita, Julie Lekstrom Himes tells a tale of enduring love: what threatens and what saves it. (Is it coincidence that both Bulgakov and Himes are physicians and novelists?) Satan figures prominently in Bulgakov’s origin......more