The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov [FIRST U.S. EDITION / 1967]

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

FIRST U.S. EDITION / FIRST PRINTING [1967] HARPER & ROW

Incredibly rare U.S. first edition of this cult classic. 

Ex-library copy in very good condition with some flaws.  *Read description:  

Dust jacket has been permanently fixed to endpapers, the front of which is price clipped.   There is a sealed 4 inch slit across dust jacket, and another sealed tear to bottom edge.  Sticker ghosting and a small water stain near bottom of spine.  Otherwise,  clean, bright and attractive, with some light shelf and edge wear. 

Book itself is very good and reads beautifully.   Library sticker and card on flyleaf and typical library stamps on title page.   Binding is tight, but there is one spine crack along title page and a second, more minor crack along last page.  Faint trace of a lib. stamp on top of text block.  Bottom of text block has another stamp.  Wear to bottoms of book with frayed worn cloth.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. 

Suppressed in the Soviet Union for twenty-six years, Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece is an ironic parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil, and on human frailty and the strength of love. Featuring Satan, accompanied by a retinue that includes the large, fast-talking vodka-drinking black tom cat Behemoth, the beautiful Margarita, her beloved - a distraught writer known only as the Master - Pontius Pilate, and Jesus Christ, The Master and Margarita combines fable, fantasy, political satire, and slapstick comedy into a wildly entertaining and unforgettable tale that is commonly considered one of the greatest novels ever to come out of the Soviet Union.