Philosophy: Home

When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey--named Beatrice and Virgil--and the epic journey they undertake together.

An astonishing tale of one man's search for Utopia. Shevek, a briliant physicist, attempts to reunite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust.

The underground masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian fiction, this classic novel was written during Stalin's regime and could not be published until many years after its author's death. When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates--including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch--his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a pyschiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov's dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita's enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time.