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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

The Master and Margarita.

I loved this book. Everyone has a different opinion on what the best translation is, so it’s worth briefly scanning a few different ones to see which you like best. I had a really hard time getting into the Ginsburg translation, but really enjoyed the Pevear/Volokhonsky one.

Also, this site: http://masterandmargarita.eu/en/ is a great resource if you’re not familiar with 1930s Soviet history and the Gospels (both canonical and apocryphal). Without knowledge of those things you won’t get nearly as much out of the book as you could.

If you haven't, the 2008 Hugh Aplin translation is worth checking out. I found it made for a bit easier/more casual reading than the sometimes stuffy P/V, which lets the situational humor and the playfulness of the language come through a lot more naturally.

I like the Burgin and O'Connor translation, personally.

They have a postscript per chapter about "all the references you probably missed", but don't add distracting markup to the text itself to call them out. It's a nice balance, and the language is pretty good.

Anything by Bulgakov really. Heart of a Dog is fantastic too. If you like your Russian literature surrealist then Daniil Kharms is worth seeking out, and of course you can go back to the master: Gogol, and his Nose (quick plug, I produced a PD collection of Gogol shorts for SE: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/nikolai-gogol/short-fictio... )

Agreed. A worthy read[1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita

Yes. This book is fantastic.

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