Omon Ra [Paperback]

Victor Pelevin (Author), Andrew Bromfield (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1998

"An inventive comedy as black as outer space itself. Makes The Right Stuff looks like a NASA handout."—Tibor Fischer.

Victor Pelevin's novel Omon Ra has been widely praised for its poetry and its wickedness, a novel in line with the great works of Gogol and Bulgakov: "full of the ridiculous and the sublime," says The Observer [London]. Omon is chosen to be trained in the Soviet space program the fulfillment of his lifelong dream. However, he enrolls only to encounter the terrifying absurdity of Soviet protocol and its backward technology: a bicycle-powered moonwalker; the outrageous Colonel Urgachin ("a kind of Sovier Dr. Strangelove"—The New York Times); and a one-way assignment to the moon. The New Yorker proclaimed: "Omon's adventure is like a rocket firing off its various stages—each incident is more jolting and propulsively absurd than the one before."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Named by his father after the Soviet OMON, the Interior Ministry riot police, Omon, a Soviet astronaut, renames himself Ra after the Egyptian sun god. As he approaches his final crisis, Omon reflects on the lies he's told and on the one that has just been revealed to him--that the Soviet space program (that he's based his entire life upon) is entirely other than what it purports to be. As Omon tries to reconcile the events of his life, he remembers what a Colonel of the KGB once told him, " ... the more consciously you perform your feat of heroism, the greater will be the degree of truth." The ensuing truths he uncovers are astonishing. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

A rising star in the Russian literary firmament (see The Yellow Arrow, below), Pelevin, winner of the 1993 Russian Booker Prize for short stories, has written a parody of life under Communism refracted through the prism of the Soviet space program. This clever parable about a young cosmonaut ordered to make the ultimate sacrifice?killing himself after secretly piloting a supposedly unmanned lunar expedition?is sprinkled with throwaway gags, absurdist humor and wickedly ironic touches, as well as with the eerie beauty of space exploration. Obsessed with space travel since early childhood, Omon Krivomazov identifies with Ra, the ancient Egyptian falcon-headed sun god, a fixation that reflects his desire to escape the gray conformity of Soviet life and his yearning for a soul. Omon learns that more than 100 of his fellow cosmonauts have already been sacrificed as guinea pigs after taking part in supposedly automated, manless launches. Pelevin portrays the Russian space program as a vast propaganda enterprise, a distraction to paper over the tawdriness and fear of everyday life. Many allusions will be lost on American readers. And, in light of the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction state of contemporary Russian society, some of the Soviet-era satire seems oddly tame. Nevertheless, as captured in Bromfield's superb translation, Pelevin is blessed with a distinctive mix of eloquence and nervous energy, inventive storytelling and subversive wit.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (February 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213641
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213646
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pelevin is a modern mystic, April 26, 2004

By 

Girgenson "ianis_76" (London, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Omon Ra (Paperback)

Most of the reviews available on this page suggest that Omon Ra is a new "1984", i.e., a (morbid) satire of the Soviet State. I would like to disagree with this interpretation. Pelevin is a deeply mystical writer. A mystical writer (especially a Russian mystical writer) would not waste his time criticizing some long-forgotten political regime. Reading Omon Ra as a sad satire of the USSR is like saying that Kafka's Metamorphosis is about the situation in pre-war Austrian Empire or that Borges' The Book of Sand is about the condition of intellectuals in Argentina. People who see only the (pseudo) satirical dimension in Omon Ra hugely underestimate Pelevin.

In my opinion, Omon Ra could have taken place in any society and in any era (whence the surreal "reincarnation test" in the middle of the book). It is (as any good mystical novel) a travel of a soul through layers of emptiness. This travel seemingly ends on the dark side of the Moon, in desolation and despair. But wait until you read the last pages before you conclude that suicide is the only solution in the murky world of Russian mysticism. And please, compare Pelevin to Gogol or Kafka rather than to Orwell.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes Kafka look stodgy, April 17, 2001

By 

Alec Dinwoodie (SF, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Omon Ra (Paperback)

I first became aware of Pelevin when this novel was excerpted in the cosmopolitan literary magazine Grand Street, and I was instantly hooked by his signature tone. He combines withering post-Soviet cynicism with humor worthy of Cervantes or Twain and a "magical realist" mysticism that --- almost uniquely --- is never gratuitous (as with the Serbian writer Milorad Pavic) or smug.

Where Kakfa drapes the sinister in intellectual pomp and circumstance, Pelevin unpredictably shocks you again and again, even as his characters clown and bicker for your pleasure in the shadow of the paranoid Soviet state -- imagine Gabriel Garcia Marquez as a smirking nihilist. But despite the nihilism, an inexplicable redemption seems possible in Pelevin's work; his characters often escape doom at the end and wander off stunned into a new world without any idea of where they're going to go. I'll stop short of saying that it's a deep expression of the situation in contemporary Russia -- but I will say that I find it immensely appealing.

So many American artists loudly congratulate themselves on "irony" that consists mostly of kitschy 70s clothing and tattoos; so many Europeans take pride in convoluted, academic "sophistication" that leads nowhere. Victor Pelevin is an antidote to the posing, a first-rank world author whose style arises from substance; a nonaligned political writer who is literary first, and who offers no reassurances where none really exist; and, above all, an individual whose agenda seems to be his own talent.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best russian modern writer, March 13, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Om on Ra (Hardcover)

Victor Pelevin is the most interesting writer in modern Russia. New russian generation, like Generation X in the USA, is strongly different from the previous one. Victor Pelevin is the favorite writer of this generation, which live in shattered world. Their world is very strange for a foreigner. It is a combination of high-tech cyber culture, old communist remains, indian shaman culture, Chineese phylosophy and American pragmatism. Translator did great job, because the language of Pelevin is quite different from usual one. Sometimes, however, translator was not able to reproduce original spirit, because, I guess, he tried to be politically correct(PC). His translation lacks that combination of cynicism and high spirituality, which is so important in Pelevin's book.