book cover of The Life of Insects
 

The Life of Insects

(1996)
A novel by

 
 
In a sophisticated display of allegory, fantasy, and philosophical inquiry, Victor Pelevin creates an Ovidian, shape-shifting world that never fails to resonate on various strata with our own.

The Life of Insects opens with a trio of investors--two Russians and one American--discussing business prospects in the Crimea, when, suddenly, they reveal themselves to be mosquitoes in search of hemoglobin and glucose. Other figures morph from human to insect (and back again) in this thoroughly disorienting yet strangely familiar Kafkaesque novel. Both a parody of traditional Russian prose and a savage commentary of post-Soviet culture, The Life of Insects is a triumphant act of storytelling that succeeds in making "insect aspirations and anxiety feel so fragile and so soberingly universal" (The New York Times Book Review).


Genre: Literary Fiction

Visitors also looked at these books


Used availability for Victor Pelevin's The Life of Insects


About Fantastic Fiction       Information for Authors