Four stories by one of the most popularand critically controversialyoung writers to emerge from post-Glasnost Russia. "Hermit and Six Toes"; "Vera Pavlovna's Ninth Dream"; "The Life and Adventures of Shed Number XII"; and "Tai Shou Chuan USSR" are four characterstic stories by the young Russian virtuoso Victor Pelevin, here collected in a New Directions Bibelot edition. With a deadpan and cooly ironic voice that speaks of the phantasmagorical, the surreal, the grotesque and the absurd just as affectingly as Gogol did in his day, Victor Pelevin writes of the dark chaos of the New Russia. In one story, a public toilet attendant discovers in her tiled hovel the entranceway to an alternate reality; in another, a man walks through a city at night with a companion he isn't entirely sure isn't his own shadow. This slim volume offers first-time Pelevin readers a compelling taste of his bleakly comic genius.
A major disappointment ... the usual high quality Pelevin
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
Why disappointing? Because when I ordered it, I expected new stories rather than reprints from The Blue Lantern (see it for a review of the stories). However, if you've never read Pelevin, this is a small collection to get you started. The mystical chickens Hermit and Six-Toes are unforgettable. A commune from the perspective of a shed, the transformation of public bathrooms to trinket store ... Pelevin provides a funny and deep insight into human nature, especially the Russian variety.
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