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). Pelevin's story consists of a number of linked episodes all set in the immediate environs of a seaside resort hotel where Samuel Sacker, a visiting American businessman, confers with his Russian associates-to-be Arthur and Arnold. However, all three are also mosquitoes, and the acquisitive Sam unwisely feasts on the blood of a sleeping lout who has ``imbibed Russian Forest cologne.'' We next observe father and son dung beetles pondering the mysteries of the universe (such as Egyptian spirituality); a woman (and fly) named Marina, who endures the struggle for material goods in a hivelike cooperative while endlessly digging her own burrow; an engineer, Seryozha, who transfers blueprints onto computer code (and, in his parallel life as a cicada, grows a mustache and is mistaken for a cockroach), and many other similarly compound figures whose fates are joined together in astonishingly inventive ways. For example, Nikita and Maxim, a painterdrug dealer and ``conceptual artist,'' share a joint while lamenting the fact that ``bugs'' are crawling into the ``weed'' they smoke only to find that they are bugs inside the joint offered by Sam Sacker to a sultry many-legged beauty named Natasha, who—we later discover—was hatched from one of the eggs laid by Marina, from whom she is estranged. Several other such connections are made in this hilariously transformed world where ``moths fly toward the light, flies fly toward shit, and they're all in total darkness.'' It's a powerfully disturbing metaphor for the economic deprivation and social chaos of post-Soviet Russia, and Pelevin develops it with haunting, mocking specificity and authority. A brilliant work from one of the best newer writers on the international scene.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-18625-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Freelance journalist Hertsgaard (A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles, 1995, etc.) circles the earth to gauge the extent of environmental destruction and local peoples’ attitude toward it—and, by extension, whether the species will survive the 21st century. His travels have revealed to Hertsgaard that Earth’s in miserable health. From the Dinka in Ethiopia and Sudan, who suffer from the twin ravages of drought and famine, to Bohemian schoolchildren who wear gas masks to class as a result of coal burning, to the unpleasantly tactile quality of the auto-fouled air in Bangkok (and any other urban area without decent public transportation), these are dark days on the environmental front. Unsurprisingly, one culprit Hertsgaard identifies incessantly is capitalism, “predicated on continual growth, and traditionally growth has meant ecological destruction and decline.” His case is made, his point taken. The other culprit is the continuing division between haves and have-nots: “It is easy for outsiders to warn against the long-term costs of damming Africa’s rivers . . . but it is akin to a glutton admonishing a beggar on the evil of carbohydrates.” Guilt keeps the big consumers at bay (and their politicians are stymied by conflicting interests). Meanwhile, hopes for a better future, though tinged with fatalism, keep developing countries hard at developing (—I am used to it” becomes a mantra whenever he questions folks on their revolting environment). The result: stasis. Hertsgaard advises us to cut back on consumption, promote environmentally sound industry, and shift the surplus wealth from the rich, where it languishes, to the poor, by whom he believes it will be spent. However barmy, however wishful Hertsgaard’s prescriptions, he’s got one thing right: when it comes to the environment, we remain the sorcerer’s apprentice, and the mess only gets bigger. ($40,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 6, 1999
ISBN: 0-7679-0058-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
An anthropologist paints an admiring picture of a now extinct tribe with whom he dwelled for two years on the Philippine island of Mindanao. Schlegel (Anthropology/Univ. of Calif., Santa Cruz), then a doctoral student, moved his wife and young children to the island of Mindanao in 1967 (having previously served there as an Episcopal priest) and then headed into the bush to observe and record the life of the Teduray..In time, Schlegel came to esteem them for their communal, egalitarian values. The Teduray had no established hierarchy; beyond a sexual division of labor, there was no sexual discrimination; disputes were handled in accordance with a strict legal code and reparations for various infractions (usually elopement from a marriage, which occurred frequently) were painstakingly worked out. The tribe’s central precept, a twist on the Golden Rule, was “Don’t give anyone a bad gall bladder,” said organ seen by the Teduray as the center of one’s rational and emotional senses. So much did Schlegel take to his study group, in fact, that his own consciousness started to change, and much of this account is a meditation on the contrasting realities of the tribe and that of the modern world. Written some 30 years after his experience, Schlegel’s account, beyond his astute discussions of creation myths, religion and daily living habits, is less an objective study than a personal voyage of discovery. The book ends in great sadness: in 1972, Schlegel, by then a professor, learned that the entire tribe had been killed by rebels during a period of religious and civil strife on Mindanao; a decade later, one of his children who had at times joined him in the field, died from a lingering disease. Part serious anthropology and part reflection from the distance of years, the book is finally a testament to one of the myriad of vanished peoples of this century. (map)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8203-2057-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
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