Synopsis
A satiric parable of life in contemporary Rusia follows the misadventures of two men and an American as they forage, quarrel, joke, and act like human insects in a Black Sea resort, which, like their country, is falling apart
Reviews
An ingenious and cryptic allegorical fantasy, obviously inspired by Karel apek's classic play The Insect Comedy, in which characters exist simultaneously as human beings and as various insects--by the prize-winning young Russian author of Omon Ra and The Yellow Arrow (both 1996). Pelevin's story consists of a number of linked episodes all set in the immediate environs of a seaside resort hotel where Samuel Sacker, a visiting American businessman, confers with his Russian associates-to-be Arthur and Arnold. However, all three are also mosquitoes, and the acquisitive Sam unwisely feasts on the blood of a sleeping lout who has ``imbibed Russian Forest cologne.'' We next observe father and son dung beetles pondering the mysteries of the universe (such as Egyptian spirituality); a woman (and fly) named Marina, who endures the struggle for material goods in a hivelike cooperative while endlessly digging her own burrow; an engineer, Seryozha, who transfers blueprints onto computer code (and, in his parallel life as a cicada, grows a mustache and is mistaken for a cockroach), and many other similarly compound figures whose fates are joined together in astonishingly inventive ways. For example, Nikita and Maxim, a painterdrug dealer and ``conceptual artist,'' share a joint while lamenting the fact that ``bugs'' are crawling into the ``weed'' they smoke only to find that they are bugs inside the joint offered by Sam Sacker to a sultry many-legged beauty named Natasha, who--we later discover--was hatched from one of the eggs laid by Marina, from whom she is estranged. Several other such connections are made in this hilariously transformed world where ``moths fly toward the light, flies fly toward shit, and they're all in total darkness.'' 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. A brilliant work from one of the best newer writers on the international scene. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Critics in Russia and elsewhere have already traced the literary heritage of this young satirist straight back to Gogol, and in this book, Pelevin counters years of stultifying socialist realism with a fabulous tale that owes a debt to Kafka and Capek: anthropomorphized insects are metaphors for Russia's present-day citizenry. The characters include two mosquitoes, Arnold and Arthur, who are trying to set up a joint-venture business with an American mosquito, Sam Sacker (a shrewder and more technologically advanced bloodsucker); a dung beetle who passes on the meaning of life to his son; a widowed ant whose musical aspirations for her daughter are crushed when the latter rebels against parental authority--she takes up with the American mosquito, of all insects; a cicada mistaken for a cockroach when he grows a mustache; and two moths--Mitya and his "double" Dima--who become fireflies in their own search for the eternal. By turns philosophical, funny, and pathetic, Pelevin's insects lead confused lives as they try and sort out who and what they are and what their places might be in the scheme of things. Frank Caso
Pelevin has a genuine gift for transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. In his previous novel, Omen Ra (LJ 6/1/96), the young author travestied the Soviet space program, suggesting that the entire project existed only on paper and in the depths of the Moscow subway system. His most recent satire is set in contemporary Russia at an ailing Black Sea resort inhabited by characters who appear to be insects invested with human personalities. The three main characters include two Russians and a visiting American, blood-suckers all, who are actually mosquitoes. As they fly about the resort bickering, preying, and eluding their predators, they encounter other insects who struggle with challenges both sacred and profane: building a burrow, raising a child as a single parent, finding the meaning of life. Viewed from Pelevin's unique, bug-eyed perspective, these conventional activities emerge as delightfully imaginative phenomena, humorous yet melancholy. Vivid description, a sure sense of irony, and inventive prose add up to an excellent parody of life in Russia today. Recommended for all literary collections.
-?Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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