Babylon (Paperback)

Babylon follows the strange adventures of Tatarsky, a disillusioned young man in the drab days of post-Communist Moscow. As Tatarsky unexpectedly falls into the world of advertising, he finds himself enjoying the process of transforming Western ad campaigns into Russian formats. Slowly but surely, reality as he knows it begins to disintegrate in front of his eyes, and he is not certain whether this is a result of the powerful hallucinogenic drugs he consumes on occasion, or whether Russia has simply become a world with no apparent logic or sanity. Meanwhile, he is getting some helpful hints from the ghost of Che Guevara, who is now a Buddhist ghost (albeit with Freudian ideas about historical materialism), communicating via ouija boards.

It is rather easy to spot the influences in Pelevin's novels: Kafka, Bulgakov, and Philip K Dick just to name the most obvious predecessors. The absurdity of the situations that Tatarsky finds himself involved in are indeed reminiscent of Bulgakov's comic masterpiece The Master and Margarita. Furthermore, the black humour and seemingly endless series of trivial yet frightening obstacles on the path toward completion of a process bring back notions of Kafkaesque comedy (particulary The Castle). Philip K Dick is frequently evoked in the anti-capitalist satire and in the literary approach to sci-fi existentialism.

However, Pelevin's style is his own, and Babylon oscillates wildly between satiric depiction of the shallow world of advertising (often the strongest parts of the novel), and theoretical expositions on the nature of greed and human stupidity in a capitalist society. Not that Pelevin should be seen as a nostalgic socialist: he ridicules the rigidity and lack of free thought under party rule as viciously as he lashes out against the current regime. The conclusion of the novel features an idea as brilliant as it is absurd; for fear of ruining the pleasure of reading Pelevin, it shall not be revealed here. Suffice to say, you will look very carefully at the next photo you see of Boris Yeltsin.

Reviewed by Lars Andersson.

He combines considerable humour and interpretative nous to expose the significant shortcomings and explore the ultimate direction of post-Soviet capitalism and, by extension, the modern world, soaked in materialism and oblivious to the philosophical-spiritual sphere which underlies Pelevin's fiction. (The corruption engendered by Yeltsin's rule and depicted in 'Babylon' may prove far more damaging than the halving of GNP which he presided over...)

Lamentable only is the exaggerrated use of such time-worn tricks as ouija boards and narcotics abuse, to which Pelevin is forced to resort to achieve the necessary inspiration and motivation in his characters, thereby displaying, in comparison to Dostoevsky (to whom he makes duly reverent reference) a distinct psychological ineptitude.

Throughout this novel and the suspension of disbelief it induces, the insistent thought recurs, as with Franceschini's 'La donna della Piazza Rossa': could it really be true? Did Pelevin really know about the Nike suicide ad - subsequently barred? (Answers via a subconscious brand-positioning broadcast, please.)

Despite overt references to and rich imagery borrowed from it, this work pales into insignificance, however, when placed alongside the source of all Truth, the Bible itself.