South Manchester Book Group

We're a friendly and open reading group, and we share a love of books and discussing them with other people. We meet every fortnight, but you don't have to come to them all. It's dead simple; choose a book you like the sound of, read it (or even part of it) beforehand and turn up with a few ideas and money for beer / wine / flirtinis. It's very informal, and we're quite a friendly bunch. We meet at a pub in Didsbury around 8 pm, and can usually be found on the table with the books and flirtinis.

If you enjoy talking about books over a quiet drink, then please join us — new members are very welcome.

Our reading list, past, present, and future, appears here and a short version of what we’re reading next is here.

Thursday 17 October 2019

The Master and Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov

Book cover for Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita in the South Manchester, Chorlton, and Didsbury book group In Soviet Moscow, God is dead, but the devil — to say nothing of his retinue of demons, from a loudmouthed, gun-toting tomcat, to the fanged fallen angel Koroviev — is very much alive. As death and destruction spread through the city like wildfire, condemning Moscow's cultural elite to prison cells and body bags, only a madman, the Master, and Margarita, his beautiful, courageous lover, can hope to end the chaos.

Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign and circulated in samizdat form for decades, when The Master and the Margarita was finally published it became an overnight literary phenomenon, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere.

This week's book is Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.