Antonina Maksimukinstagram.comAntonina Maksimuk (née Leontyeva) graduated from the art-and-graphics faculty of Kuban State University. She designed a deluxe gift edition of Bulgakov’s novel for Roossa Publishers. Once upon a time—I remember—you could pick up this book without much trouble; by now it’s become something of a rarity: you have to comb the second‑hand bookshops, and even then there’s no guarantee. Fortunately, a handful of the illustrations from that edition can be found online (alas, not all of them).
Chapter 1. Never Talk to Strangers
“…Judging by his looks—over forty. Mouth a bit crooked. Clean‑shaven. Dark‑haired. Right eye black, left one, oddly enough, green. Black eyebrows, but one higher than the other. In short—a foreigner…”
Chapter 2. Pontius Pilate
“…A chair had already been set by the fountain on the mosaic floor, and the Procurator, looking at no one, sat down in it and stretched out his hand toward…”
Chapter 3. The Seventh Proof
“The tram ran over Berlioz, and a round dark object was flung under the grille of Patriarch’s Alley onto the cobbled slope. Rolling off the slope, it bounced along the cobbles of Bronnaya. It was Berlioz’s severed head.”
Chapter 4. The Chase
“Letting three cars go by, the cat hopped onto the rear platform of the last, grabbed some sort of gut sticking out of the wall with its paw, and rode off—saving itself a ten‑kopeck piece…”
Chapter 7. The Unlucky Apartment
“‘Eleven! And I’ve been waiting exactly an hour for you to wake up—you told me to be here at ten. So here I am!’”
(By the way: the words “So here I am!” are the line with which the operatic Mephistopheles appears, serving as the main prototype of Woland).
Chapter 12. Black Magic and Its Exposure
“…First hilarity, then amazement swept the whole theater… there were cries, ‘ah! ah!’ and peals of laughter…”
Chapter 13. The Hero Appears
“‘There were thousands of people on Tverskaya, but I give you my word she saw only me, and she looked—not anxious exactly, but almost as if in pain. What struck me was not so much her beauty as the extraordinary, never‑before‑seen loneliness in her eyes!…’”
Chapter 14. Glory Be to the Cock
“…The finance director cast a desperate look around, backing toward the window that opened onto the garden—and in that moon‑drenched window he saw the face of a naked girl pressed to the glass and her bare arm, thrust through the transom, trying to work the lower latch…”
Chapter 15. Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream
“…Then Nikanor Ivanovich was visited by a dream that was undoubtedly rooted in the day’s experiences…”
Chapter 16. The Execution
“A few minutes later only those two bodies and three empty posts remained atop the hill. Water lashed and turned the bodies. Neither Levi nor Yeshua’s body was still on the hill.”
Chapter 18. Unwelcome Visitors
“At his call a little limping fellow ran into the entry—dressed all in black knitwear, knife tucked in a leather belt—red‑haired, with a yellow fang and a cataracted left eye.”
Chapter 19. Margarita
“…Margarita Nikolaevna’s mysterious interlocutor vanished. She quickly shoved her hand into the handbag where, at that scream, she had hidden the box, and made sure it was there. Then, without another thought, Margarita hurried out of Alexander Garden…”
Chapter 20. Azazello’s Cream
“Margarita yanked the curtain aside and sat sideways on the windowsill, hugging her knee. Moonlight licked her right side. She raised her head to the moon and struck a pensive, poetic pose…”
Chapter 21. The Flight
“But what came next no longer interested Margarita. Taking aim so as not to snag a wire, she gripped the broom more tightly and in an instant was above the ill‑fated house. The lane tilted sideways beneath her and fell away. In its place spread a jumble of rooftops scored at angles by gleaming tracks. The whole mass suddenly began to slide off, the chains of lights smeared and fused…”
Chapter 22. By Candlelight
“…All this the terror‑stricken Margarita made out as best she could in treacherous candle shadows. Her gaze was drawn to the bed, where sat the very one whom poor Ivan at Patriarch’s had insisted did not exist. That non‑existent being was sitting on the bed…”
Chapter 23. The Great Ball at Satan’s
“Now the crowd below was surging up like a wall, as if storming the landing where Margarita stood.”
Chapter 24. The Master Is Retrieved
“…At the table sat Margarita, quietly weeping from the happiness she had just endured. A notebook, scorched by fire, lay before her, and beside it towered a stack of untouched notebooks. The little house was silent…”
Chapter 28. The Last Exploits of Koroviev and Behemoth
“…Both targets instantly dissolved into thin air, and from the Primus oven there shot a pillar of flame straight at the awning…”
Chapter 29. The Fate of the Master and Margarita Is Decided
“The air on the terrace freshened. After a while it grew dark… A fiery thread ran across the whole sky. Then the city shuddered to a crash. It came again, and a thunderstorm began. Woland was no longer visible in its murk.”
Chapter 32. Absolution and Eternal Refuge
“…That hero went into the abyss, went irrevocably—absolved on the night before Sunday—the son of the stargazer‑king, the cruel fifth Procurator of Judea, the horseman Pontius Pilate…”
