"A complex, expansive, explosive novel—at times brilliant, at other times tedious—and definitely not for every taste."
The werewolf of the title is both literally and metaphorically a fox, a 2,000-year-old Muscovite prostitute in the body of a 15-year-old.
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"Admirers of Pelevin's fiction should attempt it. But it's too much of a maze—and there's nothing to show the way out."
The classical myth is reinterpreted with black-comic brio in this odd new novel from the internationally acclaimed Russian author (The Life of Insects, 1998, etc.).
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"A little too scattered and willfully antic to rank with Pelevin's best. Nevertheless, further proof that this merry satirist wears the mantle of Gogol, Bely, and Bulgakov with more flair than almost any other contemporary novelist."
The world of advertising gets a richly comic comeuppance in this latest (1999) novel by the hip absurdist (Buddha's Little Finger, 2000, etc.).
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"Buddha's Little Finger is, by comparison, a messy and self-indulgent performance; still, in it's ornery bifurcated way, it's another uniquely interesting book from a spectacularly talented and brainy writer."
A strangely discordant yet generally quite compelling political novel from the prize-winning (and remarkably productive) young Russian writer (The Life of Insects; A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia, both 1998, etc.).
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A fascinating collection of eight surpassingly strange stories, the second to have won Russia's Booker Prize by the young author of Omon Ra (1996) and The Blue Lantern (1997).
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"A brilliant work from one of the best newer writers on the international scene."
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).
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The Blue Lantern ($22.95; Oct. 30; 160 pp.; 0-8112-1370-6): This first of two volumes offers the selected stories of an abrasive and amusing Russian writer whose novels include The Yellow Arrow and Omon Ra (both trans. 1996) and whose short fiction won the 1993 Russian Booker Prize.
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"It's the work of an exciting new talent, and one hopes his other fiction will soon be in English translation as well."
A vigorous satire on the Soviet space program is combined with a thoughtful dramatization of the mixed human impulses to explore, conquer, and transcend in this memorable short novel by the author of The Yellow Arrow (see below).
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"A brilliant parable that treats a dauntingly abstract conception with vivid specificity and clear-eyed humanity."
An enigmatic novella, whose suggestive central image strikingly encapsulates the character of post-Soviet society and, more generally, the fate of man—from the prize-winning Russian author of Omon Ra (see above).
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