Babylon

Pelevin, Victor

ISBN 10: 0571202470 / ISBN 13: 9780571202478

Published by Faber & Faber, London, 2000

About this Item

No marks or inscriptions. Softback book with dust jacket. No creasing to covers, creasing to spine. A very clean very tight copy with bright unmarked boards, small nick to lower front edge and no bumping to corners. Dust jacket not price clipped or marked or torn or creased. 250pp. A deliciously comic vision of vanity, greed and advertising set in Russia soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Translated from Russian by Andrew Bromfield. We do not use stock photos, the picture displayed is of the actual book for sale. Every one of our books is in stock in the UK ready for immediate delivery. Size: 8.5 x 5.25 inches.

Seller Inventory # 025699

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Babylon
• Publisher: Faber & Faber, London
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571202470
• ISBN 13: 9780571202478
• Binding: Soft Cover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good (+)
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

Translated from the Russian, this razor-sharp satire on consumer culture, Russian style, follows the irresistible rise of a Moscow advertising copywriter, who specialises in adjusting Western adverts to the Eastern mentality and selling Pepsi, Seven-up, Gucci, Mercedes and Reebok to the rising middle class.

Review

"Gucci for Men--be a European, smell better". The irresistible rise of Babylen Tartasky from poet to advertising copywriter followed by the short step to ultimate political power is founded on his smart diagnosis of his country's malaise and his ability to encapsulate his compatriots yearnings in a sharp slogan. This is the new Russia of gangsters, fast-flowing cocaine and the untrammelled free market and it is a very disturbing place indeed, not least because in its rawness is laid bare the anatomy of our own degenerative Western culture. Add a splash of Gucci aftershave and there really is little to tell us apart.

As a literary sensation in Russia, with six novels already to his name, Pelevin has clearly touched a nerve with his acute insights into the national psyche. Written with cruel wit concealing an austere compassion, it is Pelevin's peculiar talent to capture the sheer absurdity of the experience of a nation which, in the space of a century, has undergone two convulsive revolutions, won and lost a global empire, conquered space and yet been defeated by its own habits of dependency. Omon Ra, Pelevin's most controlled work to date, is a novel woven around the fundamental Soviet fantasy of the cosmonaut hero, while The Clay Machine Gun concerns a contemporary madman's vivid imaginings of his experiences as an unintentional hero of the Revolution. In Babylon, though, we are tricked by a double fantasy: the narrative segues in and out of virtuosic hallucinatory prose alongside Tartasky's own drug trips while the story itself veers towards ludicrous revelations about where the power in society truly lies.

At times the strategy can be exasperating and the ultimate rewards are slightly squandered but along the way there are wonderful jokes and acute analysis. ­-Alex Butterworth