Satan insists that Jesus existed. An affluent Soviet wife becomes a witch to save her denounced lover. Pontius Pilate suffers eternal guilt. Doesn’t sound familiar? Time to read Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.

Little known among lay Western readers, Bulgakov’s magnum opus enjoys a cultlike status in Russian culture and is one of the twentieth century’s greatest—and strangest—novels.

This eight-week, discussion-driven course tackles Bulgakov’s literary tour-de-force by engaging its key themes, narrative structure, and historical context via required and optional readings. What, we will ask, is the relationship between the novel’s Biblical and Soviet plots, and how does this double narrative form inform the text’s major themes?

Set in 1930s Moscow, Bulgakov’s novel still resonates today, inspiring Pearl Jam’s “Pilate,” Patti Smith’s “Banga,” and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. “Follow me, reader!”