The Master and Margarita (1967)

Satan's visit to Moscow brings the literary bureaucracy, housing privileges and official claims to rational order into spectacular confusion. The absurdity has a target: people who control access to comfort and publication can make their own appetites sound like public principle. The Jerusalem narrative adds a different pressure on cowardice and authority. Its publication history includes a censored 1966–67 serial; choose an annotated English edition that explains its textual basis.