The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (Penguin, £7.99 in UK)

Penguin presents this novel as a Twentieth Century Classic, a title which can hardly be disputed at this stage. Since it was first published in 1966, more than a quarter of a century after Bulgakov's rather early death, it has gone into many editions and many languages. The novel is, of course, not quite finished, and its final chapters betray the weakening grip of a dying man; it has also the basic flaw that neither the Master himself nor Margarita (in effect, a modern Faust and Gretchen) really comes alive. The sinister, surreal side of the narrative is the main source of its remarkable imaginative power, and in Woland Bulgakov created a (literally) diabolic figure who can compare with anything in Dostoevsky or Kafka. The translation is by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.