Satan and the Soviets

Mikhail Bulgakov endured decades of victimisation and censorship by the Soviet authorities after he wrote The Master and Margarita, the story of a stricken writer and his girlfriend who are plagued with a visit from Satan in 1930s Moscow. Today, the satire is being hailed as one of the 20th century's greatest novels. In a vivid comics translation, writer Andrzej Klimowski and artist Danusia Schejbal perfectly capture the magic realism of this Faustian tale, especially in Schejbal's vibrant yet delicate gouache paintwork. Rendering the Moscow sequences in black and white and the story of the The Master's novel - The Passion - in colour, Schejbal effectively accentuates Bulgakov's core theme of freedom of truth in an un-free world.

Danny Graydon