A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia Автор: Пелевин Виктор Олегович; Издательство: New Directions Pulishing (USA) Год издания: 2003 ISBN: 9780811213943 Язык: русский

Аннотация:

Trranslated by Andrew Bromfield

Victor Pelevin is "the only young Russian novelist to have made an impression in the West" (Village Voice). With A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia, the second of Pelevin`s Russian Booker Prize-winning short story collections, he continues his Sputnik-like rise. Like the writers to whom he is frequently compared––Kafka, Bulgakov, Philip K. Dick, and Joseph Heller––he is a deft fabulist, who finds fuel for his fire in society`s deadening protocol. In "The Tarzan Swing," a street wanderer converses with a stranger who could be his own reflection; in the title story, a young Muscovite, Sasha, stumbles upon a group of people in the forest who can transform themselves into wolves; in "Vera Pavlova`s Ninth Dream," the attendant in a public toilet finds her researches into solipsism have dire and diabolical consequences. As Publishers Weekly noted about this collection, "Pelevin`s allegories are reminiscent of children`s fairy tales in their fantastic depictions of worlds within worlds, solitary souls tossed helplessly among them." Pelevin––whom Spin called "a master absurdist, a brilliant satirist of things Soviet, but also of things human"––carries us in A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia to a sublime land of black comic brilliance.