Master and Margarita

>>7684035
The Burgin and O'Connor translation is widely considered to be the best one. It captures the humorous tone of the novel quite well.

>>7684043
I recently read M&M for a Russian lit book club and this was exactly the suggested edition. Apparently at least one of the other translations not only isn't as good, but actually has some missing content as a result of being drawn from an incomplete manuscript.

Also OP a cursory understanding of the early Soviet Union would help a bit when reading, but if you read the notes after finishing the book, most of what you miss will be made clear pretty quickly.

The best translation is the one you get without much research

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>>7684043
>female translators

I read the Glenny translation and, having had nothing to compare it to, found it highly enjoyable.

>>7686175
Better to do a little research and make sure you're reading the best and getting the best experience and getting an inferior product

Hugh Aplin fixed a lot of problems

>>7684043
yup, this is the one i read, and i loved it. pro-tip: there are notes in the back of the book, but in an infuriating move the editors chose not to reference them in text, so if you want to read all the notes as they relate to the text you either have to psychically know when a note is in the back or just remember what the next note is about, so that when you see a few keywords in the text you know to flip to the notes section.

For me, the first half of the book was pretty good, but not amazing. I think a lot of the humor fell flat for me because it had to be explained in these notes. But by the second half I knew enough about early Soviet life that I was laughing my ass off.

5/5 one of my top ten books.

>>7684035
This is the version I read. Would recommend it.

>>7687658
I really wish they would just do that shit as footnotes on the same page, none of this flipping to the back constantly

>>7687987
i would have accepted endnotes if they just fucking numbered them in text. it's absurd that i have to just know that they exist.

another of my books (that i haven't read yet) does this. the princeton press version of faust i & II. ridiculous.

I got the book pretty well without any notes. then again I live next door to sovetskaja union

>>7688163
While the humor was discernible even without the notes, they still added to it. For example, while from the text I could gather that there was some sort of housing crisis going on, having notes that explaining exactly what this was and what a housing committee was made some of the more subtle buts of humor shine.

>>7684035
it all is a matter of taste and /lit/ has different opinions. see here:
http://strawpoll.me/5116627

>>7684035
yer gonna have a bad time if you expect too much from this book. it's really not all that great.

>the notes
>the notes
in the restaurant chapter the behemoth and that other lovecraftian being are talking about some writer; they're arguing if he is still alive. i guess u guise have read the notes; could you please help me out with what it is about?

>>7689636
you are objectively wrong

>>7689645
nuh uh.

rip his head off, pls. he is a bore.
>>7689636

>>7689653
rip my head off (anon) or bulgakov's?

>>7689656
>didn't read book

pleb confirmed

>>7689664
meh. it wasn't good enough to read all the way through. i don't suffer a book that i don't like for internet brownie points, bro. i even tried two different translations before i realized i simply didn't like it.