In the following excerpt, Fanger praises The Master and Margarita as one of the major novels of the twentieth century, comparing Bulgakov to a number of other authors.

Bulgakov's brilliant and moving extravaganza [The Master and Margarita] may well be one of the major novels of the Russian 20th century.... For the Western reader, the novelty of Bulgakov's genre can only be relative after Joyce and Beckett, Nabokov, Burroughs and Mailer; yet the novelty of his achievement is absolute—comparable perhaps most readily to that of Fellini's recent work in the cinema....

[This] is a city novel, the enormous cast of characters (largely literary and theatrical types) being united by consternation at the invasion of Moscow by the devil—who poses as a professor of black magic named Woland—and his three assistants, one of whom is a giant talking cat, a tireless prankster and expert pistol...