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Set in a crumbling Soviet Black Sea resort, The Life of Insects
with its motley cast of characters who exist simultaneously as
human beings (racketeers, mystics, drug addicts and prostitutes)
and as insects, extended the surreal comic range for which
Pelevin's first novel Omon Ra was acclaimed by critics. With
consummate literary skill Pelevin creates a satirical bestiary
which is as realistic as it is delirious - a bitter parable of
contemporary Russia, full of the probing, disenchanted comedy that
makes Pelevin a vital and altogether surprising writer.
Victor Pelevin's unforgettable first novel, Omon Ra, is the story
of a young man who always dreamt of becoming the ultimate Russian
hero, a cosmonaut in the mould of Yuri Gagarin. Enrolling as a
cadet at the Zaraisk flying school, it is not long before he is
chosen to be the sole pilot of a mission - to the dark side of the
moon. 'An inventive comedy as black as outer space itself. Makes
The Right Stuff look like a NASA handout.' Tibor Fischer
A cyber-age retelling of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur from
one of Russia's most exciting young writers.
Labyrinth (noun): An intricate structure of intercommunicating
passages, through which it is difficult to find one's way without a
clue; a maze.
They have never met; they have been assigned strange pseudonyms;
they inhabit identical rooms which open out onto very different
landscapes; and they have entered into a dialogue which they cannot
escape - a discourse defined and destroyed by the Helmet of Horror.
Its wearer is the dominant force they call Asterisk, a force for
good and ill in which the Minotaur is forever present and Theseus
is the great unknown.
Victor Pelevin has created a mesmerising world where the surreal
and the hyperreal collide. The Helmet of Horror is structured
according to the internet exchanges of the twenty-first century,
yet instilled with the figures and narratives of classical
mythology. It is a labyrinthine examination of epistemological
uncertainty that radically reinvents the myth of Theseus and the
Minotaur for an age where information is abundant but knowledge
seems ultimately unattainable.
An intellectually dazzling and hilarious fantasy about identity and
Russian history, and a spectacular elaboration of Buddhist
philosphy, The Clay Machine-Gun confirms Victor Pelevin as 'one of
the brightest stars in the Russian literary firmament' Observer.
'Victor Pelevin is the future of the Russian novel. His satires
take the temperature of post-Soviet Russia, in all its amoral,
dystopian chaos.With his fusion of oriental and sci-fi, there's no
mistaking Pelevin's place in the absurdist pantheon alongside Gogol
and Bulgakov.' Independent.
The short stories of Victor Pelevin are as individual,
reality-warping and endlessly inventive as his novels, moving
effortlessly between different genres and moods, bursting with
absurd wit and existential satire. In The Blue Lantern he brings
together sex-change prostitutes, melancholy animals and a cabinful
of young boys obsessed by death. Sidestepping the world we take for
granted, these stories show in miniature the fantastical talent for
which the Observer acclaimed Pelevin's work as 'the real thing,
fiction of world class'.
After auditioning for the part as a singing geisha at a dubious
bar, Lena and eleven other "lucky" girls are sent to work at a posh
underground nightclub reserved exclusively for Russia's upper-crust
elite. They are to be a sideshow attraction to the rest of the
club's entertainment, and are billed as the "famous singing
caryatids." Things only get weirder from there. Secret ointments,
praying mantises, sexual escapades, and grotesque murder are
quickly ushered into the plot. The Russian literary master Victor
Pelevin holds nothing back, and The Hall of the Singing Caryatids,
his most recent story to be translated into English, is sure to
make you squirm in your seat with utter delight.
When Ariadne helped Theseus escape the Minotaur's labyrinth with
the aid of a ball of thread, she led the way for the bewildered
victims of a twenty-first century minotaur. Trapped in an endless
maze of Internet chatrooms, a group of mystified strangers find
themselves assigned obscure aliases and commanded by the Helmet of
Horror, the Minotaur himself. As they fumble their way back to
reality through a mesmerising world of abundant information but
little knowledge, we are forced to wonder - can technology itself
be anything more than a myth?
As a poet, Tartarsky is a failure. As a copywriter for one of
Moscow's biggest advertising firms he makes $2,000 in ten minutes -
and that's before the cocaine kicks in. But as Tartarsky speeds
through a surreal world of PR mercenaries, back-door deals and Zen
Buddhism, he begins to suspect the disturbing truth behind it all -
as suggested to him by the disembodied voice of Che Guevara.
Babylon confirms Victor Pelevin's reputation as the funniest and
sharpest observer of the chaos and absurdity of post-Soviet Russian
life.
In a recent New York Times Magazine feature article, Victor Pelevin
was cited as "almost alone among his generation of Russian
novelists in speaking with a voice authentically his own, and in
trying to write about Russian life in its current idiom." Since the
publication of this collection of stories, The Blue Lantern,
Pelevin's books have been translated into many languages, and
Pelevin himself has been touted as a major world writer. The Blue
Lantern, winner of the Russian Little Booker Prize, gathers eight
of his very best stories. Various, delightful, and uncategorizable,
the stories are highly addictive. Pelevin here, as in The Yellow
Arrow (New Directions, 1996), Omon Ra (ND, 1997), and A Werewolf
Problem in Central Russia (ND, 1998), pays great attention to the
meaning of life, in earnest and as spoof. In the title story, kids
in a Pioneer camp tell terrifying bedtime stories; in "Hermit and
Six-Toes," two chickens are obsessed with the nature of the
universe as viewed from their poultry plant; the Young Communist
League activists of "Mid-Game" change their sex to become
hard-currency prostitutes; and "The Life and Adventures of Shed
#XII" is the story of a storage hut whose dream is to become a
bicycle.
Russian novelist Victor Pelevin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most brilliant young writers at work today. His comic inventiveness and mind-bending talent prompted Time magazine to proclaim him a "psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber-age." In his third novel, Buddha's Little Finger, Pelevin has created an intellectually dazzling tale about identity and Russian history, as well as a spectacular elaboration of Buddhist philosophy. Moving between events of the Russian Civil War of 1919 and the thoughts of a man incarcerated in a contemporary Moscow psychiatric hospital, Buddha's Little Finger is a work of demonic absurdism by a writer who continues to delight and astonish.
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S.N.U.F.F. (Paperback)
Victor Pelevin; Translated by Andrew Bromfield
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R545
R448
Discovery Miles 4 480
Save R97 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Damilola Karpov is a pilot. Living in Byzantium, a huge sky city
floating above the land of Urkaine, he makes his living as a drone
pilot - capable of being a cameraman who records the events
unfolding in Urkaine or, with the weapons aboard his drone, of
making a newsworthy event happen for his employers: 'Big Byz
Media'. His recordings are known as S.N.U.F.F.: Special
Newsreel/Universal Feature Film. S.N.U.F.F. is a superb
post-apocalyptic novel, exploring the conflict between the nation
of Urkaine, its causes and its relationship with the city 'Big Byz'
above. Contrasting poverty and luxury, low and high technology,
barbarity and civilisation - while asking questions about the
nature of war, the media, entertainment and humanity.
The world's first Zen Buddhist paranormal romance?published to
coincide with Halloween
One of the most progressive writers at work today, Victor Pelevin's
comic inventiveness has won him comparisons to Kafka, Calvino, and
Gogol, and "Time" has described him as a ?psychedelic Nabokov for
the cyberage.? In "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf," a smash
success in Russia and Pelevin's first novel in six years,
paranormal meets transcendental with a splash of satire as A Hu-Li,
a two-thousand-year-old shape-shifting werefox from ancient China
meets her match in Alexander, a Wagner-addicted werewolf who's the
key figure in Russia's Big Oil. Both a supernatural love story and
an outrageously funny send-up of modern Russia, this stunning and
ingenious work of the imagination is the sharpest novel to date
from Russia's most gifted literary malcontent.
Roman thought he'd found the perfect opportunity to rebel. He may
have been wrong. He awakens strapped to a set of parallel bars in a
richly appointed sitting room, and begins a conversation with a
masked man which will change his life. His world has been a facade
- one which the mysterious Brahma is about to tear away. A stunning
novel about the real world, and about the hidden chanels of power
behind the scenes, EMPIRE V is a post-modern satirical novel
exploring the cults and corruption of politics, banking and power.
And not only are these cults difficult to join - it turns out they
may be impossible to leave . . .
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Homo Zapiens (Paperback, New)
Victor Pelevin; Translated by Andrew Bromfield
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R564
R488
Discovery Miles 4 880
Save R76 (13%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The collapse of the Soviet Union has opened up a huge consumer market, but how do you sell things to a generation that grew up with just one type of cola? When Tatarsky, a frustrated poet, takes a job as an advertising copywriter, he finds he has a talent for putting distinctively Russian twists on Western-style ads. But his success leads him into a surreal world of spin doctors, gangsters, drug trips, and the spirit of Che Guevera, who, by way of a Ouija board, communicates theories of consumer theology. A bestseller in Russia, Homo Zapiens displays the biting absurdist satire that has gained Victor Pelevin superstar status among today's Russian youth, disapproval from the conservative Moscow literary world, and critical acclaim worldwide.
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Omon Ra (Paperback)
Victor Pelevin; Translated by Andrew Bromfield
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R391
R321
Discovery Miles 3 210
Save R70 (18%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Victor Pelevin's novel Omon Ra has been widely praised for its
poetry and its wickedness, a novel in line with the great works of
Gogol and Bulgakov: "full of the ridiculous and the sublime," says
The Observer [London]. Omon is chosen to be trained in the Soviet
space program the fulfillment of his lifelong dream. However, he
enrolls only to encounter the terrifying absurdity of Soviet
protocol and its backward technology: a bicycle-powered moonwalker;
the outrageous Colonel Urgachin ("a kind of Sovier Dr.
Strangelove"-The New York Times); and a one-way assignment to the
moon. The New Yorker proclaimed: "Omon's adventure is like a rocket
firing off its various stages-each incident is more jolting and
propulsively absurd than the one before."
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