Master and Margarita is first and foremost a book with a dedicated fan base. Mention it in the right company and you will not be able to stop people from talking about it for hours. Some critics dislike the book precisely because of its ability to generate a fanatical response.

However, there is no smoke without fire. The reason the book has so many ardent fans is because it is unique. It is unusual. It also manages to raise a lot of questions and send a lot of messages without even really trying. This is part of the genius of Bulgakov – he can say so much with just a single line.

The last time I re-read the book, I happened to run into some friends in Grand Central Terminal on my way to a meeting and they saw the book in my hand. I ended up canceling the meeting and having some cocktails with my friends because we got to discussing Master and Margarita.

Everyone likes different things. One of my friends was obsessed with Kot-Begemot (the cat Behemoth, though the word “Begemot” in Russian also means “hippopotamus”). Another loved the Master’s unromantic ways: “Those flowers are ugly”. And virtually everyone likes Woland, the Devil. Go to Bulgakov’s famous Apartment Number 50 and you will see that the walls in the stairway going all the way up to the apartment are covered in graffiti – Jesus, Begemot, Azazello, Woland and others, famous phrases from the book and the odd random “Sasha was here” along with a date. Walk around the corner and you can sit on a bench at the Patriarch Ponds, as I did with a young female friend in the Spring of 2007.

Ironically enough, many people love the book without understanding half (or more) of the references. Yes, it’s that sort of book. There are layers upon layers of meaning, and at each level there is something to be enjoyed. I think that to truly enjoy the book, one needs to know a bit about the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and 1930s, but some of the jokes are a bit obscure – for example, Berlioz loses his head on his way to a meeting at the Griboedov House, which itself was named after the famous Nineteenth Century Russian playwright and unsuccessful diplomat (unsuccessful because he was beheaded by an angry fanatic mob in Tehran while serving as the Russian ambassador). At one point in Woland’s show he makes reference to having someone eat sardines but not giving him water, which was a common NKVD torture practice to twist a confession from a recalcitrant “enemy of the people”.

However, the depth goes much farther than simple cultural references. Bulgakov was from Kiev and familiar with the Kiev vertep, a word that has come to mean “drunken orgy” in Russian but which originally meant a sort of puppet theatre that was performed on religious holidays. The theatre had two levels. On the lower level, to attract the attention of people and entertain them, was a farce performance with a comedy element. When the farce was finished, a moral and didactic mystery play was held telling the story of the religious holiday. Bulgakov has done exactly this – the story of the devil in Moscow draws our attention to the story of the Passion of Jesus Christ.

Moreover, Bulgakov wrote a religious novel in an atheist state, but it wasn’t a strictly orthodox novel. Some Russian religious leaders today do not like Bulgakov’s perceived “heresy”, despite the fact that his Jesus comes across as human and yet sublimely divine. On the other hand, his criticism of state atheism was one of the myriad reasons the book was immediately banned and suppressed during the Soviet era.

The farce portion of the novel – the Moscow adventures of Woland and company, the witches’ sabbat, the great Satanic ball – is reminiscent of Gogol’s style of writing, particularly his Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka cycle of stories (Gogol’s first famous work) and some of his later fantastic stories like Viy and The Portrait. There are parallels between individuals in Moscow and individuals in the passion story, too, although certain people are missing, most notably Pilate.

And it is Pilate that the book is about, after all (or at least, the Master’s book). Pilate is an authority figure who ends up having Judas killed, after using language to the head of his secret police to the effect that “we need to make sure nothing happens to him”. In Pilate’s speech, just as in the “coded” speech of Soviet leaders in general and Stalin in particular, this is an obvious request to kill the man. Is Pilate supposed to be Stalin? Or is Woland supposed to be Stalin? It is a point on which experts do not agree.

However, one thing is clear: Bulgakov had a complicated relationship with Stalin. Stalin kept most of his books from being published, but was so taken with Bulgakov’s play Days of the Turbins (in fact, it was his favorite play) that he saw it multiple times and defended it publicly every time it was criticized as a reactionary, counterrevolutionary work. Why Stalin enjoyed a play about an educated family of the Kiev intelligentsia supporting the White Guard opposition to the Bolsheviks is still a mystery to many. Some have proposed that it shows the intelligentsia as unable to act to defend their view of Russia, as defeated and as accepting the fact that they have lost, and that Stalin liked this. Regardless of why Stalin liked it, he personally protected Bulgakov from the Great Terror that engulfed millions of Soviet citizens. Every time Bulgakov’s name appeared on a list for arrest, prison or execution, Stalin personally crossed it off.

Bulgakov heard about Stalin’s odd protection. In fact, when, in 1934, he wrote a letter to Stalin requesting permission to leave the Soviet Union as none of his plays were being staged, Stalin called him on the phone and appointed him as the director of the Moscow Artistic Academic Theatre (MXAT in Russian).

As a result of this protection, “evil” is not an absolute. Evil is, like Mephistopheles from Faust, that force that “always wishes evil and always works good”. This complicated form of theodicy is something that one might expect given Stalin’s attitude to Bulgakov, as well as due to Bulgakov’s family background (he came from a family where the men were all Orthodox priests for generations – note that in the Orthodox Church a priest must marry to be given a parish, so as to counsel the faithful on marital matters better).

These somewhat unexpected portrayals of familiar subjects – the Passion, the devil, evil in general, and Soviet atheist society – have found a resonance for many.

As a result, I cannot join the critics who say the book is “over-hyped” or “overrated”. If anything, it may still be underrated and underappreciated.