Russia
The Life and Adventures of Shed Number XII
Victor Pelevin is a contemporary Russian prose writer. His works are known for their postmodern blend of satire, science fiction, and philosophical contemplation. Pelevin explores themes of identity, reality, and the influence of mass media in post-Soviet Russia. His unique style often combines contemporary observations with references to Russian culture and Buddhism.
The Life and Adventures of Shed Number XII
Comic stories by a Russian writer. In Hermit and Six Toes, chickens debate the nature of the world, which is ruled by bloodthirsty gods in white coats, while in Mid-Game, young Communist activists change sex to become hard-currency prostitutes
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.
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.
Featuring four stories by Victor Pelevin, this collection delves into the surreal and absurd aspects of post-Glasnost Russia. With a unique voice reminiscent of Gogol, Pelevin explores themes of chaos and alternate realities. In "Hermit and Six Toes," a toilet attendant uncovers a portal to another world, while a man in a city at night grapples with the uncertainty of his companion's existence. This volume serves as an engaging introduction to Pelevin's bleakly comic genius and his distinctive narrative style.
THE YELLOW ARROW is a Russian train speeding toward a ruined bridge, a train without an end or a beginningand it makes no stops. Andrei, the mystic passenger, less and less lulled by the never-ending sound of the wheels, has begun to look for a way to get off. But life in the carriages goes on as always. This important young Russian author's first American translation garnered rave reviews.
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'.
EMPIRE V is a post-modern, timely, whimsical and satirical story about a young man who involuntary joins a revolutionary cult . . .
A far-out, far-fetched, and fiendishly funny story about a strange nightclub and its outrageous entertainment.