March 10, 2025, 4:00pm

For our Villains Bracket week, a few Lit Hub staffers wrote a little bit on their favorite villain from our initial group of 64. Here’s Emily on Woland from Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.

Despite the fact that you (monsters) have already eliminated him, I maintain that the greatest villain in literature is, obviously, the mysterious professor who rolls up to Moscow with his entourage of horrifying weirdos—including, not coincidentally, my favorite cat in all of literature, who walks, talks, and shoots pistols—and proceeds to cause chaos and confusion for the mortals by day and epic balls for the witches and succubi by (mid)night. When, in the first few pages, he encounters Berlioz, an influential literary editor, he predicts his death, and he is as a matter of course, immediately decapitated. Woland takes over his apartment and starts doing magic shows. Basically, he’s Satan, but in a fun way.

I have realized that what I like best in my villains is a sense of whimsy, or at least some kind of humor—the self-serious never hold my attention the same way the evilly frivolous and flat-out irreverent can. Yes, yes, doom and gloom, blood and darkness, but are there naked people flying around at your dinner parties? Are you wearing a jaunty hat of some kind? Do you have absolutely zero respect for the supposed law and lives of the land? Are you so clever it’s painful to behold? Is your cat the size of a pig and twice as rude? Then you’re probably my guy.

And here’s Emily’s entire bracket: