BOOK CLUB Academiae Obscuriae – “The Master and Margarita” + “The Turn of the Screw”

The Academiae Obscuriae Book Club is opening the doors of the uncanny once more. Our next meeting pairs two very different works about the thin line between the real and the unreal: The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, and The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov.

In The Turn of the Screw, a young governess takes charge of two seemingly angelic children, Miles and Flora, at the remote country house of Bly. She soon becomes convinced that the malevolent ghosts of two former servants are haunting the house and stalking the children. But are the apparitions real, or is the governess losing her grip on reality? James never gives a definitive answer, and the ambiguity is precisely what keeps readers arguing more than a century later.

The Master and Margarita begins with the arrival of the devil, in the guise of the mysterious Woland, in 1930s Moscow. His entourage, which includes a giant talking cat, unleashes chaos on the Soviet literary elite. Woven through the satire are the story of a tormented writer known only as the Master, the devotion of his lover Margarita, and a retelling of Pontius Pilate’s trial of Jesus. The result is at once comic, philosophical and deeply moving.

Together, these novels lead us into discussions of ambiguity, unreliable narration, innocence and corruption, censorship, faith, love and the question of who, or what, we can trust.