A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories
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Back Cover Text
Fiction
Victor Pelevin
A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories
Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
“To paraphrase Churchill, post-Soviet Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a Pelevin.”
—Richard Lourie, The New York Times
“A psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber age... The brightest star of the post-Soviet generation.”
—Time
“A fascinating collection of eight surpassingly strange stories...”
—Kirkus
“Hip and funny, chaotic and surrealistic...”
—World Literature Today
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 Pavlovna’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.
Born in 1962 in Moscow, Victor Pelevin is the great chronicler of Perestroika-era Russia. The Blue Lantern (winner of the Little Russian Booker Prize for short stories), Four By Pelevin, and his novels, Omon Ra and The Yellow Arrow, are also available from New Directions.
ISBN 978-0-8112-1543-5
ISBN 0-8112-1543-1
Cover photograph by Evgeny Mokhorev; used courtesy of Nailya Alexander, Washington D.C.
Design by Semadar Megged
A New Directions Paperbook
NDP959
$19.95 USA / $25.00 CAN
www.ndpublishing.com
Copyright Page
Copyright© 1994 by Victor Pelevin
Translation Copyright© 1998 by Andrew Bromfield
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Published by arrangement with Harbord Publishing Limited, 58 Harbord Street, London SW6 6PJ, and the Watkins/Loomis Agency
Manufactured in the United States of America
New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper.
First published as New Directions Paperbook 959 in 2003
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pelevin, Viktor
[Short Stories. English. Selections]
A werewolf problem in Central Russia and other stories / Victor Pelevin: translated by Andrew Bromfield.
p. cm.
Contents: Vera Pavlovna’s ninth dream—the ontology of childhood—Sleep—Tai Shou Chuan USSR (A Chinese folk tale)—The Tarzan swing—A werewolf problem in Central Russia—Bulldozer driver’s day—Prince of Gosplan.
ISBN: 978-0-8112-1543-5
I. Pelevin, Viktor—Translations into English. I. Bromfield, Andrew. II. Title.
PG3485.E38A23 1998
981.73'44—dc21 98-17488
CIP
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eight Avenue, New York 10011
Second Printing
v1.0