Victor Pelevin: bibliography and interesting facts. A complete guide to the books of Victor Pelevin: from caustic satire to lyrical novels The Lamp of Methuselah, or the Ultimate Battle of the Chekists with the Freemasons

The book “The Art of Light Touches” by Victor Pelevin was published somewhat ahead of the usual annual schedule for this writer. It included a short story, a long story and a story, and each of the texts had already acquired its share of admiration and reproaches, as, indeed, the book as a whole. However, as Mikhail Prorokov believes, Viktor Pelevin is read not for the fact that he breaks records of artistic perfection over and over again (without the risk of being very mistaken, we can say that since the time of Chapaev and Emptiness, perfection has ceased to concern him at all), but simply for the fact that, as the publishing house that published the book succinctly formulated, he is “the one and only.” Something like the iPhone, glorified in his novel before last: in order to resist buying the next one, you had to not buy the ten previous ones, but bought it - so now.

Four friends go on vacation to wander the mountains. On the first evening, just getting out of the taxi, they meet a long-haired, gray-bearded cyclist singing in French about how he would have no reason to live if someone did not exist. Soon fate will bring them together again, and they will go on a walk through the mountains together.

This is how “Iakinthos” begins - the first story of three that made up Victor Pelevin’s new book. Then the landscapes will stretch, one more amazing than the other, travelers will argue about the eternal: who created the mountains? gods? for what purpose? isn't it the one with which the Egyptian pharaohs built the pyramids? “The size and antiquity of these tombstones indicated the immeasurable greatness of the deceased. On the other hand, there were so many divine pyramids that, due to their sheer number, the gods did not seem to be a particularly durable people.” Even further, it turns out that at least one of the gods has survived and is found somewhere nearby.

Depriving his critics of the pleasure of believing that the fate of the book at least to some extent depends on their judgments, Victor Pelevin leaves them with another, more sublime joy: over and over again trying to understand what he is writing about. And why are both critics and readers so drawn to an author who is not too concerned with either vitality, or artistry, or plot structure, or even the quality of jokes (with each text, the line between banter and grumbling for the author of “The Crystal World” and “The Day of the Bulldozer Driver” is increasingly drawn thinner).

“Iakinth” will not provide much help in this: it is too reminiscent of the old “Feeding the Crocodile Khufu” and “Thags”, except that the heroes in it are a little less unsympathetic. Last story, “Stolypin,” serves as an elegant afterword to last year’s “Secret Views of Mount Fuji,” only the hero-oligarchs this time interpret the structure of the universe not to each other, but to the prisoners next in line. So all hope lies in “The Art of Light Touches” itself - this is the name of the second, largest and most conceptual story in the collection. Its main character, with a surname reminiscent of a fairly famous and, in narrow circles, a cult online writer, is investigating a complicated case related to the activities of his neighbor in the country, an FSB general and generally a rather mysterious person. It gradually becomes clear that General Izyumin was involved in chimeras as part of his duty. True, the term “chimema” appeared in the reports, but the general and his subordinates did not use it among themselves, fully aware that the origins of the work entrusted to them came from those very ancient chimeras depicted on Notre Dame. And also gargoyles (Pelevin prefers to say “gargoyles”) - but a person cannot create a gargoyle. But he can create chimeras - and for some time now this is quite enough. And here again the motive of the death of God arises.

“What, in fact, did Nietzsche mean when he said his famous “God is dead”?.. Nietzsche wanted to say that the heavenly music had died down. The divine organ, embodied, in particular, in the Gothic cathedral, fell silent. Entities from higher planes, carrying the heavenly will, stopped descending into the world. Even the gargoyles of evil directed by the Enemy stopped flocking to it. Our dimension seemed to temporarily disappear for Heaven - and the “holy place”, which cannot be empty, began to be occupied by chimeras.” Chimeras, unlike gargoyles, are created not by God, who wants to communicate his will to man, but by man - but are perceived as a divine command. Or as the call of the times, the categorical imperative of humanity and progress. One could say this: they also serve as divine heralds, but their god is the one who has been worshiped for the last few hundred years and who prefers not to reveal himself, but to work exclusively through his adepts. His name is Reason, and in the mid-1790s in France, churches were even dedicated to him and masses were celebrated, but after that he again went into the shadows and has since acted only from there.

Experienced readers have already guessed: Pelevin is again talking about the fact that you need to keep your mind in emptiness, and keep your ears open and not believe anyone except Tibetan monks (and it’s better not to believe either). Yes, we can say that “The Art of Light Touches” is a performance of Pelevin’s favorite songs to the tune of “Operation Burning Bush” - this was the name of the story included in “Pineapple Water for a Beautiful Lady” about a modest teacher named Levitan, forced by the FSB to work first with the voice of God for the American president, and then with the voice of the devil for the Russian one. In “Art...” the special services are also at war, but instead of speakers hidden somewhere in the head, they use chimeras - fads, fashions, ideologies, in general, emanations of Zeitgeist, that same Reason in its actual incarnation - it is, in essence, Kronos, god-time (and here the second story rhymes perfectly with the first).

But this is not about how not to let yourself be fooled. The continent's champion in skepticism, Pelevin does not favor skeptic heroes. The characters in the story about the crocodile Khufu, who were extremely advanced in the field of illusionism, so confidently revealed the secrets of the poor magician that they began to build the Egyptian pyramid for many thousands of years. If the sleep of the mind, as Victor Pelevin reminds in his new book (equipped, by the way, with illustrations and reproductions of Goya and Rembrandt), gives birth to monsters-chimeras, then the mind itself - not God, but the human ability to perceive, understand and invent - is capable of gifting its owner many joys, delights and insights (“the thinking human mind, which questions everything, is also one of the angels,” as was said in the same “Operation Burning Bush”). All that is required of him is to listen, to heed, to wait, to be surprised, not to push himself forward, not to push himself forward, not to take on too much.

And here the writer Pelevin finds himself in the position of that same magician from the story about the crocodile. He masterfully creates illusions that could entertain and instruct the unsophisticated, but the vanguard of his fans are precisely those who are too sophisticated. He, who studied with the Strugatskys, knows how to set up thought experiments of any complexity and fearlessly bring them to the end, but these experiments prove few things to anyone. He is gifted with the talent of an exhaustively precise word (which largely explains his inattention to the plot - his main events take place not in the physical world, but in the lexical-semantic one), but unlike the Strugatsky readers, Pelevin’s readers are those who ask The tone in the discussion of his books is not techies, but humanists. That is, people who know everything about words, but do not understand their meaning.

Well, if you believe General Izyumin, the most powerful chimeras, already embedded in the consciousness of a potential enemy, remain dormant for a while, and are launched by triggers - code phrases that have no apparent relation to the matter, and can often seem meaningless. Pelevin is difficult to decipher, although it doesn’t seem to encrypt anything in particular - this is a minus. But they continue to read Pelevin - and this is a plus. Maybe that’s why he writes a book a year - he feeds the chimera, which one day, no one knows from what words of his, will awaken and tell us what to do.

What to read: everyone is discussing these new products

Pelevin’s 17th novel is divided into three parts: in the first episode, four friends go on vacation, where they meet a mysterious old man; in the second part, Pelevin retells the plot of the book by a certain K.P. Golgotha, and the ending became a kind of continuation of Pelevin’s previous novel “Secret Views of Mount Fuji.” “Art” was published recently, but has already become the best-selling book of the season. If you are not afraid of really long dialogues (several pages) - welcome.

Books you'll enjoy

We invite you to be one of the first to read new novel Victor Pelevin, the novel was published at the end of August and, apparently, has already become a bestseller. The book is a collection of three stories: the first tells about hipsters wandering around the North Caucasus, the second about Russian hackers, and the third about the heroes of Pelevin’s last year’s novel “Secret Views of Mount Fuji.” If you are not yet familiar with Pelevin’s work, it’s time to fix that. And yes, in this case, do not forget to read one of the most famous novels of the writer “Generation P”.

Chimeras, criminals and gods: a review of Victor Pelevin’s book “The Art of Light Touches”

Over the past five years, Viktor Pelevin’s books have traditionally been published in late summer or early autumn. It is unknown whether this is a requirement from the publisher or whether the author himself wanted to publish more often, but the fact is clear. If previously one of the best-selling writers in Russia could release one book every two or three years, now every August or September his new novel appears on the shelves. At the same time, “The Art of Light Touches” will primarily please not fans of the writer’s monumental and heavy works, but those who miss his experiences in short prose.

And even the title of the book itself seems to speak about this. After the very overloaded “iPhuck 10” and the deliberately topical “Secret Views of Mount Fuji,” Pelevin returns to the past and again experiments with an unusual form of presentation.

Different stories about the same thing The novel consists of three parts that are practically unrelated to each other. Moreover, one of them, which gave the title to the entire book, is much larger than the rest. And it is she who looks a little weaker, although the author himself more than once ironizes about the length of the work. The other two, in terms of presentation, are more reminiscent of Pelevin’s stories from the nineties. Well, the plots here are traditional for most of the writer’s works. They have some kind of informal guru (this could be a guide in the Caucasus mountains, or one of the prisoners in a prison carriage), who tries to initiate newcomers into the secrets of existence.

Most of the stories are told in direct speech, and the background action only complements it, setting the stage for the final twist and making listeners part of the story.

It’s not too difficult to guess how the plot will turn out in the finale. But stories are not written to surprise the reader with a sudden twist. He talks about this in almost all of his works in the last ten years. And it seems that “The Art of Light Touches” is just another of his attempts in simple words convey to the reader the ideas of Buddhism. Therefore, each time the main idea remains approximately the same, only the form changes.

In his new book, Pelevin talks about sacrifices to the god Kronos and psychics of the Soviet Union. Then he finds a connection between religion ancient egypt, the community of Freemasons, chimeras and gargoyles at the Council Notre Dame of Paris, and turns it all into a detective story about an FSB conspiracy. And in the finale it completely turns the story into a criminal tale with criminal jargon.

But in fact, in these stories it is not difficult to discern the standard ideas of Pelevin’s books. Everything is invariably connected with the value of time as the main human resource. But the main thing is the materiality of thoughts and ideas that a sufficient number of people believe in.

The two-volume “The Caretaker” of 2015 was almost entirely devoted to the latter. And now Pelevin returned to his favorite topic with obvious pleasure.

Brevity is the sister... The second part of the book, the most voluminous and important, is presented rather ironically. Here Pelevin again reminds that he loves to experiment with genres, and at the same time rebuffs all his critics latest works.

It is written in the form brief retelling and at the same time analyzing a non-existent book by a certain K.P. Golgotha. That is, the author himself writes a review of his own book, and shows what would happen to his works if they were created with an eye on reviews.

In general, Pelevin criticizes almost all of his later works. IN recent years he is regularly criticized for being too long in action and prone to overly detailed dialogue - this is especially felt in "iPhuck 10". And then the writer himself offers to briefly retell the voluminous work in the spirit of modern summary articles or podcasts. He only mentions that here there should be a description of the architecture, and here - details of personal relationships. But at the same time, he throws out all the artistry that was supposedly in the book of Golgotha, reduces dialogues and descriptions from 50 pages to three and leaves only the very essence.

The result is something like The Da Vinci Code, only with a study of the origins of gargoyles in architecture and at the same time an analysis of Russia's influence on world politics. The first leads in an interesting way to the topic of the development of religions and cults. And in connection with the latter, the author regularly breaks into his favorite humor, bordering on trash, dedicated to tolerance, Twitter, the new Cold War and other current topics. The desire to touch on basic social issues is felt very strongly: the “yellow vest” protests and even the fire in Notre Dame are flashed. But the writer, of course, makes the topic of Russian interference in the US elections the center of the story.

But still, despite the irony of the presentation, the central part of the book seems a little drawn out. Perhaps only because before and after it there are much more concise and shorter works, where almost the same thoughts are presented much more compactly, and therefore more intensely.

In recent years, Pelevin has increasingly connected his works with each other. In “The Art of Light Touches” it is easy to notice direct references to “Helm of Terror” and either a development or criticism of the mythology of “Empire V”, and the last part with the title “Stolypin” unexpectedly intersects with one of his recent works.

There is some malicious intent in all this. In his new book, Pelevin shows the similarity of rituals in many religions and cults, emphasizing the cyclicality and monotony of world history. That is why the author does not hide the fact that all his books are about the same thing, just each time in the spirit of a new time. And for the same reason, the three seemingly unrelated parts of the novel quite fit into a single picture.

But still, in recent years, behind self-irony, excessive reflection and a desire to comply with the agenda have begun to appear more and more. That is why the short stories from this book are easier to read; in them, Pelevin does not try to grab onto relevance and make you laugh with a topical joke. He writes about what is important at all times, and he does it just fine.

Pelevin presented a new version of the Universe

Victor Pelevin’s book “The Art of Light Touches” consists of two stories (“Iakinf” and “Stolypin”) and a treatise story, which gives the title to the entire collection. As always, the author’s work offers an answer to the question once asked by Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov to his son Ivan: “Who is it that laughs at a person like that?” Of course, the writer doesn’t know this for certain - but at least he’s trying to detect the reptile!

FOUR young people travel through the mountains with a weirdo guide named Iakinthos. Of course, he is talking about the main thing - what kind of gods rule the world. He tells how in his youth, pretending to be a psychic according to the fashion of the time, a certain initiate brought him to a secret place and explained that the god Kronos (aka Saturn and also Baal) had not disappeared anywhere from the life of mankind. And the picture that “the new gods have squeezed out the world and driven the old gods under the bunk” is fundamentally incorrect. Kronos, the lord of time, still accepts sacrifices, keeping a low profile. And time is all that a person has. “What can we do? We’ll run around a little, trade in our youth, shit on those who came before, and then they’ll start shitting on us and little by little they’ll write us off... They’ll devour us unnoticed. So cycle after cycle.”

There is a hierarchy of power both above and below. “There are local authorities, there are central authorities, there are international centers strength... there are authoritative boys. People whisper that there is a world government that decides everything, but no one has seen it. It’s probably the same in the Universe...”

In the story-treatise “The Art of Light Touches” the author changes the mask of the narrator, although we still hear the same voice of a witty, intellectual, educated buffoon and chatterbox that has been familiar for thirty years. Who decided to find the root of the evil of human life and tell about it, entertaining the reader - that is, the voice of Pelevin himself. This time he allegedly retells in abbreviation the voluminous work of the historian and philosopher Golgotha. This philosopher was struck by the mysterious poisoning of his neighbor in the country, General Izyumov, and, trying to find the reason for such a strange turn in the fate of a seemingly peaceful old man, he unwinds the chain of investigation. The general didn’t just drink tea in his dressing gown. He was touched upon the main secret of the history of civilization.

The turning point is the end of the Middle Ages, when the direct connection between man and God through intermediaries ceases (in the old days they were called angels and messengers; Pelevin calls them “gargoyles”). Instead of them, the two-horned gentleman comes again, the same Saturn-Baal-Kronos, but he calls himself Reason. Humanity begins to intensively worship Reason (during the French Revolution of 1789, such a cult was actually established). Specifically, this imaginary Mind controls with the help of chimeras.

The chimera replaced the previous messengers. “Some phenomena of consciousness, known as “public opinion,” “new trends,” “the hum of time,” correspond to invisible and incorporeal entities in the everyday sense that manifest themselves in our lives precisely through the fact that the wind of time begins to hum in a new way ... this is the famous spirit of the era.” That is, a person accepts the suggestions of chimeras as his beliefs and opinions. The more heads are infected with the so-called “public opinion”, this or that ideology, the stronger the spirit of the time and the more powerful the Mind-Kronos becomes.

Moving first to Kaliningrad, then to Holland, then to Paris, then to Sukhumi and finding more and more witnesses to the life and work of General Izyumov, our Golgofasky understands that this old man ran the secret office of our GRU, which was engaged in the complex production of these chimeras. Aimed at America. And everything that has happened to America over the past 20 years is the work of General Izyumov, which became significantly easier with the advent of social networks. Now launch the verbal code on Twitter - and the chimera begins to instantly grow and get fat.

The goal is to crush America. But the general understood that “with such healthy and sane people as the Americans of the late twentieth century were, it would be difficult to do something like this. Therefore, his task was to destroy the main thing that made America America - the clear, rational and free American mind. Ideally, he wanted to turn the United States into the same stupid and deceitful society that it was Soviet Union seventies... to create a disgusting and stuffy atmosphere of hypocrisy, fear and lies...” And General Izyumov’s laboratory developed and launched into American society the entire system of its current chimeras - political correctness, identity politics, gender madness and left-wing activism.

However, the response began to arrive - malicious chimeras, invented in our country, began to return and infect little by little and Russian society. These idiot progressives imagine that they are following their convictions, but in fact their sluggish little minds are ruled by chimeras launched into America by General Izyumov!

As a result of a global clash of chimeras (and Americans are inventing their own, launching them through our segment of social networks), the world finally risks turning into... a 4-letter word, the first “w”.

“I don’t really want to live,” the Golgotha historian saddens, “in this epochal f..., for what is w... in the scientific sense? Well... there is something that cannot be passed through, a section of the path that will have to be rewinded, and the deeper our blue carriage goes into it (even if it’s an armored train - what’s the point?), the longer we will then have to back away towards the light , that was once at the end of the tunnel... but at the end of this... there is no light.”

Pelevin as the largest demonologist of our time in developing an answer to the question “Who is it that laughs at a person like that?” reached undeniable heights. This makes no sense. People are completely fooled - and imagine themselves to be progressive and thoughtful, being tiny cogs in a demonic mechanism. The domestic events of this August-September (I hope they will end up in Pelevin’s new novel) are a voluminous illustration of the mass psychosis of consciousnesses poisoned by chimeras. Moreover, you can’t tell who exactly is manipulating, the demons quarreled, and the GRU and the CIA merged, annihilated and reactivated again, but it is absolutely unclear in whose favor.

And reason - not a cunning and deceitful demon god who came to rule humanity by stealing its name - but genuine reason, is it able to take the world out of the word starting with the letter “w”?

This is unlikely - as the Red Army soldier Sukhov used to say. But at least as long as we think with our own heads, and do not writhe in mass psychoses, no matter what “progressive and humane” guise they put on, we regain our human dignity. What I mean is that Viktor Pelevin is a great guy: he doesn’t take part in the dances of chimeras.

You can't fool him, demons. He will see you, catch up with you, describe you, catch up with you again and classify you!

The art of light curses “Ogonyok” read the new novel by Victor Pelevin

Came out new book Victor Pelevin "The Art of Light Touches". To the Ogonyok observer, however, it did not seem easy - rather, it reminded me of a monumental fresco about human suffering.

Three-part form. In the first story, four carefree tourists and a guide go to the mountains in the Nalchik region. Broker, talking head on TV, owner of a company that installs plastic windows (crappy), social philosopher. After walking for five days, the guide with the strange name Iakinthos tells them his own story of initiation every evening. Things are clearly not going to end well. In the end, something bright and merciless will appear that will not leave even a trace of the little carriers of corporate evil. In the next part, Pelevin acts as a reteller of the multi-page work of the philosopher and historian K.P. Golgotha, behind which Prokhanov is guessed; from the stone chimeras of the burnt Notre Dame to the noospheric and media chimeras. Finally, the third story is about how the gloomy atmosphere of a prisoner's carriage is used to re-experience the joy of life.

The book resembles a fold, with two small doors on the sides and a massive board in the middle. The left part describes the ritual of sacrifice: modern people voluntarily sacrifice themselves without even noticing it. Realizing their own insignificance in the face of eternity, they unconsciously strive for self-destruction; out of emptiness and emptiness will come. At the center is a massive history of human suffering, from antiquity to the present day - and the attempts to put suffering at the service of humanity. And on the right is a short lesson on how to extract an unusual kind of pleasure from suffering.

Pelevin is an unsurpassed master of the story, short story, gizmo; they are light, literally floating, it is unclear what they are holding on to (like the prisoner’s carriage in the story “Stolypin”). They say that there is an early Pelevin, and there is a late one - this is not entirely accurate. There is a short Pelevin and a long one. Behind the “short” one one can feel a concentrated master who creates with one effort of thought. Precisely because the universe needs to be arranged in seven days, there is nothing superfluous in it, no invasions from the outside world interfere with the fate of the story (I would like to do without spoilers, but the story “Stolypin” is the strongest and bravest: in fact, it challenges established criminal concepts). But behind the “long” Pelevin there is a craftsman who makes a big thing to order: in order to bring it to the required volume, you have to fill it with media “white noise” (that is, conspiracy theories, which are now at every turn).

In general, we have before us a school trick about the transition of one energy into another: suffering into pleasure and back (it’s easy to guess that the author himself adheres to the concept “without suffering there is no happiness”). But now the question is: where, in fact, does the suffering go, the billions of cubic meters of human suffering throughout our long history? Surely it cannot disappear without a trace? And if suffering is inevitable, there must be some meaning to it, for what is it “needed”? When you raise the question of the “meaning of suffering,” a projection of a higher order inevitably arises in front of you. Anyone who thinks this way automatically begins to look at the world from the point of view of the “higher mind.” As Pelevin writes, when you reach the barriers, it is more difficult to choose detour options: along with the concept of higher intelligence, you must automatically accept the concept of the insignificance of an individual human personality. That “a person in himself means nothing”, that he is always a hostage to someone’s will (it’s amazing, but, for example, Vladimir Sorokin in his dystopias does not need “higher meaning” as a crutch at all: all the outrages are created by the people themselves who find pleasure in violence, in causing pain to others). The concept of a “higher plan” is popular today in Russia (in this sense, Pelevin is a bright exponent of public mood). It is not the people themselves who are guilty of something or are responsible for something - this very “highest plan” is responsible for everything. However, seeing a “higher meaning”, for example, in the mass human disasters of the twentieth century known to us, is a dangerous line; so close to justifying monstrous atrocities. Pelevin feels this well and therefore, despite all his spiritual structuralism, he skillfully avoids dangerous analogies.

It is pointless to write a review of Pelevin in the usual form, because he has long been “his own review” (in the new book he is just writing a “liberal review” of himself, taking away the last bit from the critic). But what we need to capture from a work is not the plot, but the light and sound, as Maurice Blanchot taught us. After 30 years, it is more or less clear who (and what) Pelevin is for Russian culture.

The last Soviet generation (Pelevin's most devoted reader) had only notches left from the past, marks in the unconscious - often in the form of haunting words or songs, quotes from films. But they are very strong - like any first impressions. Let's follow Pelevin's method, let's take a completely typical thing that spins in our heads, well, for example, the song “Gravity of the Earth,” with the chorus “we are the children of the Galaxy,” sung by Lev Leshchenko. The song was written in 1978 - the very peak of Brezhnevism, but also the beginning of its decline. In essence, a completely humanistic and universal text, without any ideology.

But it's worth listening to now - like any Soviet-like Someone else’s, parallel voice immediately begins to sound in my head. This can be called a sabotage of consciousness (Pelevin, by the way, has a story that literally implements this metaphor - “Operation Burning Bush”, 2010). This voice cleverly and evilly begins to joke, laugh at every line of the song, as if mimicking it, and all the charm of golden Brezhnevism crumbles, and it becomes clear that behind every line of the song there is not even a lie, but simply emptiness. What kind of voice is this? This “inner voice” is Pelevin. More precisely, even so - “Pelevin”. This can be called the voice of reason, criticism, but this is not enough; he seems to speak on behalf of an entire philosophy. Pelevin gave us a language for deconstruction, for ridiculing ideological utopias (the reviewer, for example, remembers how he literally ceased to be Soviet man, having read Pelevin’s first novel “Omon Ra”, for which I will always be grateful to him).

You can, of course, find Pelevin’s unofficial literary roots, but, in essence, he is the first (and almost the only) post-Soviet writer. Like the ancient gods, he “gave birth to himself” - out of nothing, out of ash and dirt. At the very foundation of “Pelevin” lies not the laughter culture of Rabelais, not Bakhtin’s carnival, or anything else very cultural. Pelevin’s language was “born” from sadistic nursery rhymes (“a girl found a grenade in a field”, etc.), terrible pioneer bedtime stories - about a black “Volga” with the inscription SSD (death to Soviet children). These things, charged with great cynicism, are considered today to be a popular antidote against cloying socialist realism and dead dogmas, just like jokes about Chapaev or Stirlitz. Their destructive energy turned out to be very strong - due to their absolute anti-culture and even immorality, but they could not generate anything but destruction. “I myself lit a fire that burned me from the inside. I left the law, but never got to love,” BG wrote in 1988, and the same can be said about Pelevin himself.

Pelevin became the destroyer of not just Soviet utopias, but any utopias in general, even if they were a hundred times more humane than totalitarian ones. After all, if one admits that there are some “good utopias,” this puts an end to his entire writer’s plan and concept. But he cannot do this (like any writer - it is difficult to give up claims to universality). And if in his early works some kind of “hope” for a person slipped through, then since then Pelevin has deliberately expelled even hints of this hope. That is why he turns part of his gift into ritual curses in each novel. modern world- with his belief in human improvement, tolerance, feminism and renovation. In this sense, Pelevin is doomed to continue to create gloomy frescoes about a person who is dependent on higher wills and forces, on the struggle of special services or echelons of higher intelligence. In a sense, Pelevin describes himself - he cannot do anything against his own writing strategy. Well, against the wind, as popular wisdom says, too - what's the point. Pelevin will be defeated when someone proposes another myth - one that also has such powerful energy, but at the same time is able to “believe in a person” and put him at the center of the universe. Modern Russian literature, however, emphatically does not believe in man, considering him a “hostage of history,” and in this sense it is all similar. Looks like Pelevin.

Date of birth: 22.11.1962

Popular modern Russian writer. Pelevin's books have been translated into all major world languages, including Japanese and Chinese. Plays based on his stories are successfully performed in theaters in Moscow, London and Paris.

Viktor Pelevin was born in Moscow on November 22, 1962. In 1979 he graduated from the Moscow Secondary English Special School No. 31 (now the Kaptsov Gymnasium No. 1520). This school was located in the center of Moscow, on Stanislavsky Street (now Leontievsky Lane), it was considered prestigious, and she worked as a head teacher and teacher there. English language Victor's mother is Efremova Zinaida Semyonovna. His father, Oleg Anatolyevich, also worked as a teacher - at the military department at the Moscow Higher Technical School. Bauman. In 1985, he graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute with a degree in electromechanics, studied at the Literary Institute, but was expelled. For several years he was an employee of the journal Science and Religion, where he prepared publications on Eastern mysticism. The first published work was the fairy tale “The Sorcerer Ignat and the People” (1989). Pelevin's books have been translated into all major world languages, including Japanese and Chinese. Plays based on his stories are successfully performed in theaters in Moscow, London and Paris. French Magazine included Victor Pelevin in the list of 1000 most significant contemporary figures of world culture.

The writer Victor Pelevin mystified the public for so long and skillfully that among his young fans there was even an opinion that the real Pelevin did not exist, and that novels under this name were written almost by a computer.

Viktor Olegovich Pelevin (November 22, 1962, Moscow) is a Russian writer, author of the cult novels of the 1990s: “Omon Ra”, “Chapaev and Emptiness” and “Generation “P””. Winner of numerous literary prizes, including “Small Booker” (1993) and “National Bestseller” (2004).

In 1979, Victor Pelevin graduated from secondary English special school No. 31. After school, he entered the Moscow Energy Institute (MPEI) at the faculty of electrification and automation of industry and transport, which he graduated in 1985. In April of the same year, Pelevin was hired as an engineer at the Department of Electric Transport at MPEI.

In 1987, Pelevin entered full-time graduate school at Moscow Power Engineering Institute, where he studied until 1989 (he did not defend his dissertation on the project of an electric drive for a city trolleybus with an asynchronous motor).

In 1989, Pelevin entered the Literary Institute. Gorky, on correspondence department(prose seminar by Mikhail Lobanov). However, even here he did not study for long: in 1991 he was expelled with the wording “for being disconnected from the institute” (Pelevin himself said that he was expelled with the wording “as having lost touch” with the university). According to the writer himself, studying at the Literary Institute did not give him anything.

From 1989 to 1990, Pelevin worked as a staff correspondent for Face to Face magazine. In addition, in 1989 he began working for the journal Science and Religion, where he prepared publications on Eastern mysticism. In the same year, Pelevin’s story “The Sorcerer Ignat and the People” was published in “Science and Religion” (on the Internet you can also find information that the writer’s first story was published in the magazine “Chemistry and Life” and was called “Grandfather Ignat and the People”). .

In 1991, Pelevin released his first collection of short stories, The Blue Lantern. At first the book was not noticed by critics, but two years later Pelevin received the Small Booker Prize for it, and in 1994 the Interpresscon and Golden Snail awards.

In 1996, Pelevin’s novel “Chapaev and Emptiness” was published in Znamya. Critics spoke of it as the first “Zen Buddhist” novel in Russia, while the writer himself called this work “the first novel whose action takes place in absolute emptiness.” The novel received the Wanderer-97 award, and in 2001 was shortlisted for the world's largest literary prize, the International Impac Dublin Literary Awards.

Pelevin's books have been translated into all major world languages, including Japanese and Chinese. Plays based on his stories are successfully performed in theaters in Moscow, London and Paris.

French Magazine included Viktor Pelevin in the list of 1000 most significant contemporary figures of world culture (Russia in this list, in addition to Pelevin, is also represented by film director Sokurov).

Books (14)

Empire V. Empire V. The Tale of a Real Superman

Main character- Nineteen-year-old Roman Shtorkin - became a vampire, received the divine name Rama the Second and began to study the main vampiric sciences - glamor and discourse. Their essence is camouflage and control - and, as a result, power...

After reading this fantastic, philosophical, at times humorous and aphoristic novel, you will learn the whole truth about creation and the laws of our world, which “was written by Rama II, friend of Ishtar, chief of glamor and discourse, Komarin man and god of money with oak wings.”

Batman Apollo

Dedicated to my friends and peers, the generation of Russian vampires 1750-2000. birth - to everyone who entered this life as into a friendly nightclub, not knowing that the night that sheltered us was already running out.

The book features characters from the novel Empire V, but prior knowledge of it is not necessary. You can start here and read Empire V later.

All stories and essays. Author's collection

“All Stories and Essays” by Victor Pelevin is one of the writer’s iconic books.

Using it - like an oracle - you can guess about the true meaning of our life, opening at random either the legendary story “The Yellow Arrow” or the philosophical parable “The Recluse and the Six-Fingered One”.

Thanks to the hero of “Prince of Gosplan”, future generations will remember the best computer game of the nineties “Prince of Persia”, and immediately, plunging into the myths and practices of werewolves, our descendants will read with bated breath the story “The Werewolf Problem in the Middle Zone”.

This book has everything that Pelevin is loved for. Strength and knowledge, daring wit and subtle self-irony, fascinating stories at the intersection of reality and the otherworldly, a style recognizable from the very first lines, where every word is worth its weight in gold.

All stories (Collection)

The collection includes works:
Sleep
. Sorcerer Ignat and people
. Sleep
. News from Nepal
. Vera Pavlovna's ninth dream
. Blue lantern
. USSR Taishou Zhuan
. Mardongi
. The life and adventures of barn number XII
Middlegame
. Ontology of childhood
. Built-in reminder
. Water tower
. Middlegame
. Ukhryab
Memory of fiery years
. Music from the pillar
. Kroeger's Revelation (documentation set)
. Weapon of Vengeance
. Reconstructor (About the research of P. Stetsyuk)
. Crystal World
Nika
. Origin of species
. Tambourine of the upper world
. Ivan Kublakhanov
. Tambourine of the lower world (Green box)
. Bungee
. Nika
Greek version
. Sigmund in a cafe
. Brief history paintball in Moscow
. Greek version
. Lower tundra
. Yuletide cyberpunk, or Christmas night-117.DIR
. Time out
Focus group
. Horizon light
. Focus group
. Record about searching for wind
. Guest at the Bon holiday
. Akiko

Insect life

A dizzying phantasmagoria with a transfer from one bizarre reality to another and a change of character masks exactly at those moments when the reader least expects it... But are these bright masks really so conventional and what lies beneath the grotesque? Read and decide for yourself.

The Lamp of Methuselah, or the Ultimate Battle of the Chekists with the Freemasons

As you know, the difficult international situation of our country is explained by the acute conflict between the Russian leadership and world Freemasonry.

But few people understand the roots of this confrontation, its financial background and occult meaning. V. Pelevin's hybrid novel tears away the veils of silence from this mystery, simultaneously explaining in a simple and accessible form the main issues of world politics, economics, culture and anthropogenesis.

At the center of the story are three generations of the noble Mozhaisky family, serving the Fatherland in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

Pelevin Victor. Stories

Abstract to the book The collection includes the following works:

1. "Akiko"

2. “Day of the Bulldozer Driver”

3. “Vera Pavlovna’s ninth dream”

4. “A brief history of paintball in Moscow”

5. "Lunokhod"

6. “Music from the Pillar”

8. “Ontology of childhood”

9. “Lower Tundra”

10. “Hats on the towers”

11. "Middlegame"

12. "Origin of Species"

13. "Reenactor"

14. "The Recluse and the Six-Fingered"

15. "Yellow Arrow"

16. "The Life and Adventures of Barn No. XII"

17. “Sigmund in the cafe”

18. “Tambourine of the Lower World”

19. “Tambourine of the Upper World”

20. “Greek version”

21. “Ivan Kublakhanov”

22. “The Sorcerer Ignat and the People”

23. "Weapon of Vengeance"

24. "Kroeger's Revelation"

25. "Light of the Horizon"

26. “News from Nepal”

27. "Water Tower"

28. “The werewolf problem in the middle lane”

Holy Book of the Werewolf

“In appearance, I can be given from fourteen to seventeen - closer to fourteen. My physical appearance evokes in people, especially men, strong and contradictory feelings that are boring to describe, and there is no need - even lolitas read Lolita in our time. These feelings feed me. You could probably say that I feed on fraud: in fact, I am not a minor at all. For convenience, I define my age at two thousand years - I can remember them more or less coherently. This can be considered coquetry - in fact, it’s much more for me. The origins of my life are lost very far away, and remembering them is as difficult as shining a flashlight into the night sky. We foxes were not born like humans. We come from the heavenly stone...” - This is where we will end the quotation. We invite you to read one of the most fascinating and brilliant books in history. Russian literature!

- (b. 1962), Russian writer. In 1984 he graduated from the Moscow Energy Institute (MPEI), studied at the Literary Institute named after. Gorky. He worked in one of the first small private publishing houses in the country, participated in the publication of texts by Carlos Castaneda... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

- (b. 1962). Rus. prose writer, more famous prod. other genres; one of the most interesting representatives of modern grew up "postsov." prose. Genus. in Moscow, graduated from Moscow. Energy Institute, majoring in electromechanics, after serving in the army... ... Large biographical encyclopedia

Victor Olegovich Pelevin Date of birth: November 22, 1962 Place of birth: Moscow ... Wikipedia

Pelevin, Victor- Russian writer Russian prose writer, author of the story Omon Ra (1992) and the novels Chapaev and Emptiness (1996), Generation P (1999). Winner of numerous literary awards, including the Little Booker (1993) and National Bestseller (2004).... ... Encyclopedia of Newsmakers

Pelevin surname. Pelevin, Alexander Alexandrovich (1914 1970) Soviet theater and film actor, Honored Artist of the RSFSR. Pelevin, Valentin Vasilievich (1913 1958) Soviet architect. Pelevin, Viktor Olegovich (b. 1962) Russian... ... Wikipedia

Victor Olegovich Pelevin Date of birth: November 22, 1962 Place of birth: Moscow ... Wikipedia

Books

Generation "P", Pelevin Viktor Olegovich. Victor Pelevin is a cult writer of our time, whose work had a huge impact on the recognition and formation of mass consciousness. The book includes some of the best, in the opinion of...
Generation "P", Pelevin Viktor Olegovich. Victor Pelevin is a cult writer of our time, whose work has had a huge influence on the recognition and formation of mass consciousness. The book includes some of the best, in the opinion of...