Things I didn't know about The Master and Margarita

Picked up Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" at the B Public Library (after rejecting a beat-up old copy at the P. Public Library - wanted the Volkhonsky - Pevear translation, as they have set the current standard for Russian translations, although their footnotes are pretty weird - very seldom do they comment on the work itself but generally on the many topical references along the way) - M&M is one of those novels that show up on many lists, and that I'd never read, and in fact knew very little about: Item: I bet I thought for a long time that it was a Latin American work of magic realism (no, Margarita is not a cocktail). Item: Once I learned it was a Russian novel, I imagined that it was from the great period of the 19th century. Item: Once I learned it was a 20th-century novel, I imagined it was from the early century, maybe contemporaneous with Chekhov. And finally I've learned it was written in 1940 or so, just around the time of Bulgakov's death, and published in 1963 - so it didn't even enter the canon until around the time of Ivan Denisovich - though was much less known and less discussed at that time. Not sure of the quality yet though the first chapter, in which two literary pals drinking apricot soda (!) on a park bench encounter of spectral figure who engages them in discussion about the existence of God (they're good Soviet atheists). I suspect the Margarita of the title is a reference to Faust, which is quoted in the epigraph. Wonder how this somewhat surreal novel will compare with its near contemporary, One Hundred Years of Solitude, another world-lit novel that entered the canon forever and established Garcia Marquez as among the greats. Bulgakov, it seems, will stand on the reputation of this novel alone - too bad he was never able to savor his fate, or his fame.