In late-1920s Moscow — still as boisterous and petty-bourgeois as ever, yet already Soviet — a mysterious foreigner arrives, surrounded by his operetta-like retinue. He draws the Muscovites he encounters into a chain of unimaginable events, but his true mission is to find a disgraced author of a novel about the Gospel story, and the woman who loves him. Bulgakov begins with a plot traditional for his time — almost satirical — of stagnant Soviet everyday life being shaken by the intrusion of a stranger. Into this he weaves the story of the final days of Jesus, ultimately arriving at a deeply personal, tragic narrative about the power of creativity, the nature of love, and the interlacing of good and evil.
