----- Original Message -----
From:
Sandy P.
Klein
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 10:08
AM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] borrowings from the
work of Vladimir Nabokov ...
The Sacred Book Of The Werewolf
Kerryn Goldsworthy, reviewer
The Sacred Book Of The
WerewolfDescribed as "the Zen Buddhist Will Self of the former Evil Empire", Victor Pelevin is a star of contemporary Russian literature. The Sacred Book Of The Werewolf is an extraordinarily accomplished piece of contemporary writing that mashes up an assortment of genres: horror, humour, romance, fantasy, satire and post-modern self-reflexivity and sampling. The result is something that has to be classified as "high" literature, if only because of its entanglings in and borrowings from the work of Vladimir Nabokov and its deadly serious critique of contemporary Russian society under Putin.
The narrator-heroine is part Lolita, part were-fox - a creature from Chinese folklore that can shape-shift into human form, most usually that of a young girl. In one of many plays on literal and metaphorical meanings, Pelevin turns his foxy young woman into an actual, if magical, fox. His linguistic universe, like Nabokov's, is full of multilingual puns and it's very clear that translator Andrew Bromfield has had his work cut out for him; the translation is coherent and convincing, successfully conveying the playful, savage energy of Pelevin's Russian vision.
The foxy young narrator, who lives in Moscow, is named A Hu-Li; much of what we know about her comes from her frank letters to and from her sisters E Hu-Li and U Hu-Li, both also were-foxes, who all address each other indiscriminately as Ginger, Red or Carrot-Top and who write letters as frank and scandalous as letters among sisters usually are. She makes her living as a prostitute, not in the usual fashion but rather by hypnotising punters, with a peacock-like display of her brushy tail, into believing that their fantasies are real.
When A Hu-Li embarks on an affair with a military werewolf, things get even more chaotic than they already are and the conversations become more and more philosophically dense. This book is a hilarious, satirical and very clever meditation on Russian literature, politics and history.
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