Companion to Victor Pelevin

Companion to Victor Pelevin, a collaborative undertaking by a group of emerging Russianist scholars, focuses on the work of one of the most important and hotly debated post-Soviet writers. 

It provides a valuable resource to scholars, teachers, and students, including how best to teach Pelevin to university-level students, and which critical debates invite further investigation. The contributors offer new readings of Pelevin texts that cover a broad time span and pay due attention to the philosophical and aesthetic complexities of Pelevin’s oeuvre in its development from the early post-Soviet years to the second decade of the present millennium. Examining all of Pelevin’s major works and all Peleviniana currently available in English, the Companion aims to prompt further inquiry into this author’s intellectually stimulating and socially prescient work.

“This compendium is an indispensable guide to the perplexing world of one of Russia’s most prominent contemporary writers. It charts the evolution of Pelevin as an author, explores recurring themes across his career, and elucidates the intense scholarly debate his writings have spurred, both in Russia and abroad. The book admirably refrains from offering ‘conclusive’ readings and exhaustive overviews. Concentrating on the author’s pivotal novels and stories (while referencing many others), it acknowledges – and lucidly discusses – the diverse interpretations they have provoked. Yet the compendium’s contributions also offer new, perceptive analyses of Pelevin’s persistent and evolving concerns. This book thus caters both to an ‘uninitiated’ audience, and to readers, scholars, and teachers who have already engaged with Peleviniana in depth.”

–Boris Noordenbos, Associate Professor in Literary & Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam

“The Companion to Viktor Pelevin provides a comprehensive and accessible guide to the major themes and preoccupations of this most popular and enigmatic of all contemporary Russian writers. Compiled and introduced expertly by Sofya Khagi, the author of the first English-language monograph on Pelevin, the volume offers a useful overview of scholarship on the writer and showcases innovative interpretive methods in combination with insightful close analyses of his most important works. The contributions contextualize Pelevin’s writing in Russian history, politics, the literary canon, contemporary philosophical thought, and late-Soviet and post-Soviet ideologies; and Khagi’s introduction engagingly probes his various controversies. Indispensable for all those who teach and study his work.”