The Blue Lantern: And Other Stories

In a recent New York Times Magazine feature article, Victor Pelevin was cited as almost alone among his generation of Russian novelists in speaking with a voice authentically his own, and in trying to write about Russian life in its current idiom. Since the publication of this collection of stories, The Blue Lantern, Pelevin's books have been translated into many languages, and Pelevin himself has been touted as a major world writer. The Blue Lantern, winner of the Russian Little Booker Prize, gathers eight of his very best stories. Various, delightful, and uncategorizable, the stories are highly addictive. Pelevin here, as in The Yellow Arrow (New Directions, 1996), Omon Ra (ND, 1997), and A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia (ND, 1998), pays great attention to the meaning of life, in earnest and as spoof. In the title story, kids in a Pioneer camp tell terrifying bedtime stories; in Hermit and Six-Toes, two chickens are obsessed with the nature of the universe as viewed from their poultry plant; the Young Communist League activists of Mid-Game change their sex to become hard-currency prostitutes; and The Life and Adventures of Shed #XII is the story of a storage hut whose dream is to become a bicycle.

Author: Victor Pelevin
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 05/17/2000
Pages: 188
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.49lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9780811214346

About the Author
Pelevin, Victor: - Victor Pelevin is one of Russia's most successful post-Soviet writers. He won the Russian Booker prize in 1993 Born on November 22, 1962 in Moscow, he attended the Moscow Institute of Power Engineering, and the Institute of Literature. He's now been published throughout Europe. His books include A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia, Omon Ra, The Blue Lantern, The Yellow Arrow, and The Hall of the Singing Caryatids.Bromfield, Andrew: - Born in Yorkshire, England, Andrew Bromfield is a translator of Russian literature and an editor and co-founder of the literary journal Glas.