The Master and Margarita: A graphic novel by Mikhail Bulakov
Reviewed by Neel Mukherjee

CENSORSHIP BY the State resulted in Mikhail Bulgakov's jet-black, wild and hilariously subversive novel, The Master and Margarita, being first published in 1966, 26 years after its author's death.
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Klimowski remains one of the great illustrators of our time and this book takes him to newer territory compared with his earlier, wordless The Secret or The Depository, or the more novelistic Horace Dorlan, for here he seems to be a preternatural master of the graphic novel form in its conventional panels-with-texts- and-images configuration. The Walpurgisnacht sequence before Satan's ball is drawn with inspired abandon. while his Satan is a creature of fascination with a bilaterally asymmetrical face twisted by a permanent, feral sneer.

Depending on which side you're looking at the face from, it appears either cadaverously attractive or hideously disfigured; the metaphorical heft is made into a visual pun of real panache. Klimowski and Schejbal's book stands on its own but is also a wonderful introduction to Bulgakov's masterpiece.

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