Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” has 32 chapters in its standard complete form. The chapter count reflects the novel’s carefully interwoven structure rather than a simple linear plot.
The novel alternates between 1930s Moscow and ancient Jerusalem. In Moscow, Satan appears as Professor Woland, accompanied by characters including the talking black cat Behemoth, Koroviev, Azazello, and Hella. Their supernatural disruptions expose corruption, cowardice, greed, and the absurdities of Soviet literary society.
The Jerusalem sections tell the story of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Notsri. These chapters are embedded within the Moscow narrative and are connected to the Master’s suppressed novel. Four chapters—2, 16, 25, and 26—focus directly on the Jerusalem story, helping create the book’s distinctive nested design.
Readers sometimes encounter different apparent counts because the novel was published in censored form in 1966–1967, and some editions organize introductory material or deleted passages differently. The complete, conventionally numbered novel is counted as 32 chapters. Bulgakov worked on it from 1928 until his death in 1940, and the first book edition appeared posthumously in 1967.