Professor Matthew Eastman walks into his office one afternoon and suddenly discovers that he's "forgotten" a year of his life. It is now 2005, but he doesn't remember anything from 2004. A therapist pulls him through his life, crisis-by-crisis and sin-by-sin, until they reach 2004. That was the year when he began researching a Russian novel that includes elements of black magic. That book, "The Master and Margarita," slowly takes over his life and steers him towards where he doesn't want to go, to an affair with a student that he doesn't want to remember.