A story about the absolution of Pontius Pilate (and also maybe anti-soviet propaganda apparently, I guess). It's a Mephistophelian fable about making deals with the devil intermixed with a grimdark "historical fiction" account of Jesus' passion.

Chapter 1 opens with two intellectuals (Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyryov aka "Homeless", Mikhail and Alexandrovich Berlioz) discussing Homeless' poem about Jesus that he was commissioned to write in order to make him look bad. Misunderstanding the assignment, he portrays Jesus' to have been definitely real but not Messianic. A stranger interrupts them and starts being weeeeiiiiiird and very quickly we can infer that the stranger is The Devil. He spooks the hell out of Ivan and Berlioz, telling them of necromancy, anticipating their apprehension, and even telling Berlioz about his future and own death.

Chapter 2 consists of the historical account of Jesus meeting with Pontius Pilate before his trial at the hands of the lower Sanhedrin. Jesus (Yeshua Ha-Notsri) is not a Christ-figure, but rather a strange miracle worker who has been getting trailed by the equally-weird but less-powerful Matthew Levi who puts words in his mouth and records them on his scroll, thus leading to Ha-Notsri's misunderstood infamy in Judea. Their dialog (all the chapters detailing Pilate) are chilling. While the rest of the book is not un-violent, its graphic scenes read as comic relief relative to the stone-cold solemnity of the Jesus passages.

Berlioz (who is promptly beheaded in a monkey's paw-esque manner, just as the devil AKA 'Woland' predicted) is a staunch Stalinist and the chairman of MASSOLIT: a literary collective which was responsible for rejecting the Master's novel about Pontius Pilate (we learn that the interwoven chapters about him comprise the novel which Berlioz rejected, thus terminating the Master's career and landing him in the psych ward). We don't get much else about the Master (all of us could be the Master in Bulgakov's Soviet tyranny).

In the psych ward, The Master is introduced to Ivan Nikolayevich who is shortly admitted after witnessing the death of Berlioz just as Woland predicted. The book alternates between their experience in the psych ward (w/ visitations between The Master and Margarita who is infatuated with him despite her loveless marriage) and the Devil and his crew going around town exposing various money speculators and corrupt bureaucrats with comedically grotesque shows.

Stephan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev is the directory of the "Variety Theater" of Moscow where most of these shows take place. He happens to have been Berlioz' roommate (MASSOLIT are good candidates to aid and be victims of Woland's villainy).

Woland's crew consists of:

• Behemoth - a shapeshifting demon who assumes the form of a large cat most of the time
• Korovyev aka Fagotto - (outsourcing this char description to Wiki because it bears more depth than I would have possibly noticed even w/my shiniest thinking cap on): meaning "bassoon" in Russian and other languages), he is described as an "ex-choirmaster", perhaps implying that he was once a member of an angelic choir. Korovyev's name is also based on the Russian word for "cow" (Корова), a reference to Charles Gounod's Faust, where Mephistopheles praises a "Calf of Gold". At the same time, it echoes the Hebrew word karov (קרוב), meaning "close", hinting at his special proximity to Woland as his right-hand man.
• Azazello - fucked up eyes. killah with a browning. Funny
• Hella - succccccubus

related