What would happen if Jesus came back to earth for a few days, to the here and now in the city of Berlin? The answer: Everything would be completely different, beautiful and delightful, as it rarely is in reality – and as it ultimately doesn’t continue to be in the novel either.
Usually, when you invoke divine assistance, nothing happens. But that’s not the case for Mischa and Anastasia, students of Slavic studies who are infatuated with Russian literature and – as they come to discover – with each other. They invite Yeshua, and Yeshua accepts the invitation. But that isn’t the only surprise: Yeshua is more earthly than expected; he doesn’t perform a single miracle, but he infects everyone he meets with love. And soon love is running rampant throughout the city, which quickly attracts the attention of a gang of devils for whom kindness and happiness are a nightmare.
Mischa and the Master is a wonderfully nimble, delightfully grotesque, and comic novel about the sacred and the diabolical and people’s insatiable longings and desires, which are the same in every era.
