Pelevin and Unfreedom

Sofya Khagi is an associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of Silence and the Rest: Verbal Skepticism in Russian Poetry.

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction:  Fifty Shapes of GridPart I: Techno-Consumer Dystopia1. After the Fall2. Language GamesPart II: Posthumanism3. Biomorphic Monstrosities4. Can Digital Men Think?Part III: History5. Not with a Bang but a Whimper6. Butterflies in Sunflower OilPart IV: Intertext and Irony7. Somersaults of Thought8. The Total Art of IronyConclusion: A Christmas Carol with QualifiersNotesBibliographyIndex

Sofya Khagi's book justifies the long wait for the first comprehensive study of Pelevin's oeuvre. Khagi is not afraid of Pelevin's sly paradoxes and his mind-boggling narrative labyrinths . . . The book doesn't simplify Pelevin's portrait; rather, it explores his productive contradiction, depicting him as a daring postmodernist and an acidic critic of postmodernity, a playful ironist and deep ethical thinker, the brightest representative of the last Soviet generation and a merciless deconstructor of this generation's ambitions and achievements." - Mark Lipovetsky, author of Postmodern Crises: From 'Lolita' to Pussy Riot"Viktor Pelevin's scintillating works unusually combine popular success and metaphysical complexity. Sofya Khagi's Pelevin and Unfreedom brings a rich set of approaches to this writer: philosophy, postmodern theory, religion, and sharp-eyed attention to the multinational intertextuality that Pelevin wields so deftly. Khagi lets us in on the irony, skepticism, and complexity of one of the best-known and most demanding Russian authors today." - Sibelan Forrester, coeditor of Russian Silver Age Poetry: Texts and Contexts"The first English-language monograph on Viktor Pelevin-Sofya Khagi's Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics-represents a scholarly milestone. Theoretically sophisticated, yet lucid and elegantly composed, the book maps out a fascinating journey through Pelevin's literary imagination, showing us a vision of a contemporary humanity enthralled by techno-consumerist dystopia and media mirages, yet at the same yearning for freedom and struggling to become self-aware." - Keith Livers, Constructing the Stalinist Body: Fictional Representations of Corporeality in the Stalinist 1930s"Khagi's outstanding new study provides a fresh and compelling approach to one of the most widely-read living Russian authors." - Eliot Borenstein, author of Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism