The Master and Margarita // Mikhail Bulgakov
From the first page onwards I knew I had magic on my hands. Magic realism, in fact. Though many consider Gabriel García Márquez to be ‘the master’ of its genre, I would vouch for Bulgakov any day. His use of surreal imagery creates a one-of-a-kind world that is both beautiful and profound at the same time. Though it stands alone as a work of art, it is also an intricate satire of Soviet society that may need to be re-read more than once in order to peel away all the layers and grasp its full context – but that is precisely the beauty and the genius of this novel.