Buddha's Little Finger [Hardcover]

Victor Pelevin (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Viking; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (1999)
• ASIN: B001AOZ8HA
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars six stars, June 4, 2000

By 

Orlando Zepeda - See all my reviews

This review is from: Buddha's Little Finger (Hardcover)

If there is any justice in the literary world, this book will earn Pelevin recognition as the literary supernova that he is, as one of a handful of writers who will define 21st century literature five, ten, a hundred, five hundred years from now. It's not an easy book - it's a book that dares to be ambitious, that dares to refuse to conform to any expectations or limitations, a rare book that is intelligent and intellectually ambitious but still deeply relevant and engaged with the world around it. Pelevin has been similarly brilliant before, particularly in Omon Ra, but Buddha's Little Finger is a mind-blowing masterpiece, a Russian novel in the tradition of Gogol and Bulgakov, yes, but also a book deliriously, wonderfully, thrillingly eager to be in that tradition and to go well beyond it. Pelevin attempts things that a writer bound by any sense of just upholding a nationalist literary tradition would never ever dare. To begin to write about Russian cossacks and revolutionaries and end up with Japanese businessmen and Buddhism and so much else - it's that kind of ambition and range that is absent from so much so-called contemporary literature, and is exactly what is necessary to make a book a 'great 21st century novel.' And that's exactly what Pelevin has written here.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rose by any other name..., May 18, 2000

By 

Stuart Whatling (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Buddha's Little Finger (Hardcover)

Indeed - naff title for the re-issue. In England it's still published as "The Clay Machine Gun".

But whatever you call it it's a masterpiece. Daniil Kharms and Mikhail Bulgakov brought up to the post-soviet age. The episodic nature of the narrative almost makes it a loosely woven thread of short stories but the themes of existence vs illusion tie everything together beautifully. Respect to Andrew Bromfield who has done another marvelous job - I only hope he never tires of translating Pelevin's work.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Russian Magic Realism with a Buddhist slant, April 24, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Buddha's Little Finger (Hardcover)

For the first fifty pages, I wondered whether this would be more than a voyage into second-rate Kafka. Then the story began to take hold. By the time I was into the second madman's story, I was hooked. If you like metaphysical voyages, like Banks' The Bridge or some of Borges' more accessible works, you will like this. If you like your Buddhism warmed over slightly, again, you'll enjoy this.

I did, but I like dream-like voyages. I especially liked the spiritual guide of Chapaev.

I was surprised Amazon didn't notice that the forward is part of the joke - there is no Urgan Jambon Tulku VII.