THE LIFE OF INSECTS.

Pelevin, Victor.

ISBN 10: 0374186251 / ISBN 13: 9780374186258

Published by New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1998)

About this Item

Hardcover first edition - First US printing. The second novel by this Russian author, one which follows the adventures and misadventures of two Russians and a khaki-clad visiting American. Set in "a sleazy Crimean resort town, where his characters eat, drink, make merry, make love. and turn into insects. This is no soft-focus allegory: the author is superbly specific about his entomological creations. 'Arthur and Arnold had turned into small mosquitoes,' he writes, "of that miserable hue of gray familiar from prerevolutionary village huts, a color that in its time had reduced many a Russian poet to tears." (William Davies) Sometimes the trio is depicted as human with buggy characteristics, and at other times as insects that walk and talk. Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield. In 1988 Pelevin was selected by The New Yorker as one of the best European writers under thirty-five. 179 pp. Fine in a fine dust jacket (as new.). Seller Inventory # 76455

Bibliographic Details

Title: THE LIFE OF INSECTS.

Publisher: New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1998)

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

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

Review:

Victor Pelevin has the sort of unbridled comedic imagination that can make most writers seem insipid by comparison. Born in 1962, the Russian writer has already published three story collections as well as a splendidly funny take on the Soviet space program, Omon Ra. From time to time his effects lurch out of control, yet Pelevin's manic level of invention tends to carry us along until he regains his equipoise. Certainly this is the case with The Life of Insects. This time, Pelevin sets his story in a sleazy Crimean resort town, where his characters eat, drink, make merry, make love... and turn into insects. This is no soft-focus allegory: the author is superbly specific about his entomological creations. "Arthur and Arnold had turned into small mosquitoes," he writes, "of that miserable hue of gray familiar from prerevolutionary village huts, a color that in its time had reduced many a Russian poet to tears." The sex scenes are a mite (as it were) much, though nothing more gruesome than you'd see in your average PBS documentary. Still, Pelevin's best trick is to makes his six-legged protagonists appear all too human. A self-doubting cicada, for example, finds himself envying the relative ease of an ant's life: "But he never dwelt on such comparisons, aware that once he stopped and began to compare himself with others, it would begin to seem that he had already achieved a great deal, and he would lose the sense of resentment toward life that was essential to continue his struggle." The Life of Insects is a black-comic Metamorphosis for the 1990s, minus Kafka's gravity and with an extra dose of Slavic neurosis. --William Davies