Master and margarita (Macmillan)

A literary sensation from its first publication, The Master and Margarita is considered a masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian literature. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library, a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers.

These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is translated żeby Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, and features an introduction by Orlando Figes. In Mikhail Bulgakov's imaginative extravaganza, Satan, disguised as a magician, descends upon Moscow in the 1930s with his riotous band, which includes a talking cat and an expert assassin.

This visit has several aims, one of which concerns the fate of the Master, an author who has written a novel about Pontius Pilate and is now in a mental hospital. By turns satiric, fantastic and ironically philosophical, The Master and Margarita constantly surprises and entertains as the action switches back and forth between twentieth-century Moscow and first-century Jerusalem.

I read it as a book about how to go on living when your spirit is broken -- Viv Groskop * Guardian * It had everything: Satan and a wise-cracking cat, Jesus as a wise simpleton, doomed love, hints of sex, blasphemy -- Jonathan Grimwood * Independent * Incandescent...

One of those novels that, even in translation, make you feel that not one word could have been written differently... It has too many achievements to list, but the way it keeps faith in love and art even in moments of unspeakable humiliation and cruelty must be the greatest * New York Times * Funny and frightening * London Review of Books *