Bulgakov Brouhaha

Mikhail Bulkagov’s The Master and Margarita is being made into a 10-part TV series, but the Russian Orthodox Church is upset with it, saying the book’s vision of the Gospel is “nothing but negative.”

The novel is a satire on the Revolution, and in its form pioneered the “magic realism” genre. It contains passages in which a character called Professor Woland – a variant of the name of Satan, who appears in Goethe’s Faust, and a thinly disguised pseudonym for the devil – narrates the life, trial and crucifixion of character called Yeshua – a pseudonym for Jesus Christ.

The church’s representative further stated that the book is full of material that people, especially non-believers, “will find very difficult to understand.”