9780140279726

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In a sophisticated display of allegory, fantasy, and philosophical inquiry, Victor Pelevin creates an Ovidian, shape-shifting world that never fails to resonate on various strata with our own. The Life of Insects opens with a trio of investors—two Russians and one American—discussing business prospects in the Crimea, when, suddenly, they reveal themselves to be mosquitoes in search of hemoglobin and glucose. Other figures morph from human to insect (and back again) in this thoroughly disorienting yet strangely familiar Kafkaesque novel. Both a parody of traditional Russian prose and a savage commentary of post-Soviet culture, The Life of Insects is a triumphant act of storytelling that succeeds in making "insect aspirations and anxiety feel so fragile and so soberingly universal" (The New York Times Book Review).

"An ingenious and cryptic allegorical fantasy....It's a powerfully disturbing metaphor for the economic deprivation and social chaos of post-Soviet Russia, and Pelevin develops it with haunting, mocking specificity and authority."

Kirkus, 12/15/1997

"Political allegory, antic fantasy, willful enigma: Victor Pelevin's latest book to appear in English is a little of all three....Pelevin's triumph is to make insect aspirations and anxiety feel so fragile and so soberingly universal."

Michael Upchurch, New York Times Book Review, 03/08/1998

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