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The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

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The Sacred Book of the Werewolf is so rich in symbolism that I hardly know where to begin. On the surface, it seems to be the story of a teenage oriental prostitute named A Hu-Li who falls in love with a werewolf in her travels through modern day Russia. But underneath that relatively thin layer is a tale more about a Russian crisis of identity, and mankind's crisis of identity as well, as both attempt to transform itself from tailless monkeys into something else--the super-werewolf. Which direction should Russia go? Shall it bow to the temptations of globalization and take on the qualities of the western world, or should it go in the opposite direction and listen to the lessons of the east which find expression in this book through the eclectic narrative of A Hu-Li herself?

Despite A Hu-Li's chosen path through life, you discover that nothing about her is quite what it seems--you're led to believe she is a prostitute, but discover she is virgin. You are led to believe she is young, but discover she is thousands of years old. You think she is human, but then discover she is a werefox, and her profession originates from her ability to use her tail--or "tale"--which causes men to believe she is the exact incarnation of their most disturbing fantasy. When they are indulging in her services, however, they are merely indulging in something originating from their own mind as A Hu-Li busies herself by lying next to them, disconnected, reading--and scoffing--at scientific literature written by the likes of Stephen Hawking.

Early in the novel during her adventures, she ends up running into a prince-like Russian named Alexander who doesn't fall for her tricks that she plays with her tail and who, coincidentally, ends up ravaging her and robbing her of the thing she treasured the most--her virginity. You then discover this Alexander is a werewolf and, quite possibly, the super-werewolf that A Hu-Li and her family of werefoxes have been seeking for thousands of years. That is precisely where the cut and dry plot of the story ends and the true nature of Pelevin's purpose begins.

While reading the narrative, I couldn't help but get the impression that what I was reading took the form of a mosaic, or cards in a deck that had been shuffled, but instead of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs, I was seeing mysticism, erotica, Russian literary history, and a critique of globalization all at the same time. You don't automatically see purpose in the plot at first glance, and you wonder as the critics on the back of the book have done, whether or not Pelevin is playing some joke on his readers. The critics seem to pretend to get the joke and call it comedic, but I pulled from its words something completely different.

Which direction should Russia go? This question seemed to be at the heart of the book. I found it mostly in Alexander's thoughts as he spends more and more time with A Hu-Li. Alexander, the heart and soul of Russia, is protected by the atypical Russian male thug who drinks like a Russian is believed to drink and is unruly in a number of ways. He protects Alexander, run errands for him, but is ultimately nothing more than a façade as the true Russia, the true Alexander, operates behind the scenes. Russia has heart and soul and is tortured in his own way as he tries to decide what it is he must do as the world has moved on, which direction he should take in life. He currently operates in stealth mode--it is a part of his occupation, to uncover secrets and keep secrets of his own.

There is a part of Alexander which cannot stand the way the world is--the rubber, the tires, the cement, tall buildings, the vomit and pollution--and this finds form as smells from which he protects himself by wearing a face mask around his ultra-sensitive werewolf nose. He only removes it to take in the smells of A Hu-Li which he claims he could continue to smell forever. So much sweeter than the rest of the world.

Russia--personified as Alexander--wants to overcome the perceptive limitations it has of itself and become the super-werewolf which has much of the same ring to it as Nietzsche's Uberman, and it is truly tragic to see Russia in this state, going through its current struggle. You wonder if he will succeed. You wonder if everyone else will succeed along with him. In one stage of the novel, however, you get the feeling he will not, as we find Alexander transforming into a werewolf and howling near an oil well in a snow-like wasteland, pleading for oil to come forth in a re-enactment of a bizarre Russian Cinderella fairy tale. Truly not "super" at all. It is a tragic scene because of the suggestion that Russia has lost itself as it attempts to join in and contribute to the needs of globalization. "Please," Alexander seems to plead with his howling, "come forth dear blood of the earth and fill our wells!" This is one of his jobs, you discover. Alexander thus transforms into the wolf while doing so--the animal--in the same way that he transforms into the werewolf during his sexual sessions with A Hu-Li.

Both the west and the east play their influence out on Alexander throughout the pages of this book, and you are left wondering as you approach the end what direction he will take, and how it will affect A Hu-Li as well. In another unusual scene--this book is loaded with them--A Hu-Li kisses Alexander for the first time in an expression of love, which causes their relationship to spin into a completely different direction. Ultimately, Alexander ends up discovering the true age of A Hu-Li and flees her presence, claiming he cannot have sex with someone so old. To me, this reveals the choice that the author believes Russia is making in the world. Instead of seeking transcendence through ancient wisdom, it has gone the way of globalization--the whore--which paints itself young and chases men in turtleneck sweaters wearing jewelry and Nike shoes.

The ultimate benefactor in the entire story is A Hu-Li herself as she discovers she is an empty vessel that fills itself with lies, that the world is illusion, that she is an illusion, that she is the world, that everything is a dream, that she is the dream the world is dreaming, and that words are useless to describe the nothingness which is the truth inside of us all. Words attempting to describe this are nothing more than stepping stones on the pathway to transcendence--the pathway to the super-werewolf which is an inexplicable path that has taken A Hu-Li thousands of years herself to find. She seeks her true nature, and she does so by learning that her "tail" is the truth, her tail is the world that is lying to itself while it masturbates, transfixed by itself, transfixed by its own lies. Thus, in a paradoxical manner, all the lies we tell to ourselves--if we admit they are so--is this truth, and the key to this ancient knowledge finds form in the Sacred Book of the Werewolf that A Hu-Li is writing for her love--Alexander and, symbolically, Russia itself. She hopes it will eventually find its way into his hands as he pursues the younger pleasures awarded after burying his head in the world of globalization. Pelevin gives you the impression that this pursuit is all for naught, and Russia, like the rest of us, will never learn, but still we must try. Pelevin, in the role of A Hu-Li, gives his gift of ancient wisdom to Russia--his own Alexander.

Although it was a rough start at first, I truly enjoyed this book of material and spiritual transformation. Like the tailless monkeys in the story, we have forgotten we are lying to ourselves as we have lost our tail. The truth is the nothingness at our core, but it is a nothingness which can be anything at all. Stephen Hawking may have inside of his head the theory of everything, but Victor Pelevin reveals inside of us all the theory of nothing, and after reading this book, Pelevin's certainly seems the more endearing version of the two. Pick it up, read it, see what the werewolves may have to teach you. Enjoy!

A Hu-Li is a Chinese werefox, in appearance like a young girl, but in reality nearly two thousand years old, with a hidden magical tail she can use to project fantasies into the minds of those around her. For centuries, she has lived in Russia as a prostitute, using her tail to provide her clients with a Lolita-like fantasy while she feeds upon their sexual energy. She has, herself, never really loved or been loved - until she meets a werewolf who allows her to discover something about herself she'd never discovered on her own.

The story itself is quite fun and intriguing but that's only the half of it. A Hu-Li is seeking enlightenment, is steeped in Buddhist traditions and in literature and philosophy, and her story is as much about ideas as it is exciting. Pelevin's wittiness does not all translate (the name of the heroine, "A Hu-Li" may seem Chinese, but, apparently, in Russian sounds strikingly similar to a bit of crass Russian slang), but his playful tone throughout, his numerous casually insightful reflections on contemporary life and literature and politics and art are unmistakeable and enjoyable. The story works as an allegory of contemporary Russian consumerism, an engaging meditation on the nature of sex and gender, on the relation between the human and the animal in all of us, and a complex reflection on the nature of experience and reality. If that sounds heady and boring, it's not. It's a lot of fun, and the comparisons with Murakami (and others like Saramago and Phillip K. Dick) are quite apt. Definitely worth checking out for those who like inventive speculative fiction and fantasy.

I don't think that this book reminded me of anything Nabokov wrote (as suggested in the blurbs); however this is an imaginative (maybe kooky) book that starts out as a sort of science fiction and ends up as a zen manifesto and with the discovery of the meaning (or lack there of) of life (for werefoxes, at least - the narrator simply didn't have the time to spell it out for humans).

I think I may have missed a lot of the subtlety of this book because I know very little about Russia.

This book was well worth the investment in time and money, and you should definitely read it. I disagree with many of the other reviews posted here about this book about a number of things. For the sake of being concise, I will not re-hash most of the points covered in the other reviews, but instead will focus on pointing out what sets this book apart from others, and what makes it special.

I would describe this novel as an absurdist masterpiece, and multi-level metaphoric excursion about the human condition. Pelevin's cosmic sarcasm is lacerating and unforgiving, but at the same time liberating. I would argue that this book is not actually postmodern, but may actually qualify as an actual POST-IRONIC work (I know - you don't beleive in such a thing, but let's not go there). I've read the majority of the English translated Pelevin books and this is my favorite, and I think the best one yet.

I would like to further assert that this book may actually qualify as a legitimate sacred buddhist text. Pelevin has perfected the art of resonating within the readers mind, through description of events in terms of visceral and interoceptive description as well as emotional and other meaningful content, to the point of displacing the readers consciousness into a higher spiritual level. For the prepared mind, this book is an ultimate vehicle. Other than that, it's a bit of a shaggy-dog tale. Enjoy.

One additional thing: The book's discussion of experiencing the world without language is a reference to Chan school (Zen) Buddhism and their epistemology which is a monism (non-dualistic). The idea of shapeshifting or were-creatures is a metaphor used in the book for a transpersonal psychological understanding of the world and being at one with the universe, as well as for human spiritual development in general.

Welcome to invigorating torture in the raw: Pelevin's take on the Russian makeover. The book reads with a bit of an accent in English. If you can't read Russian, just howl when you get bit.
I wonder if Pelevin methodically covered all angles from China to Clinton, from B.C. to post-perestroyka, from fairy tales to tabloids, from oil rigs to overdose, from sexual perversion to spiritual illumination to cash in on global scams while luring unsuspecting readers into a collective abyss (and back).
I'll admit, being from the old Eastern Blok wasn't enough to sail through this book. Be prepared to sweat through making your own study guide and to stray from familiar schemata. Chances are, the Western references will give you a break and the Eastern ones might give you a breakthrough.
Ah, and let me disclose, the fantastic heroine, A Hu-Li, yet another sly fox with didactic intentions from the Aesop, Brer, Lucius, Yobi, and Vuk woods, comes equipped with a Molotov mind.
Don't miss the transformation!
Rust (Vulpes Hungaricus)

This is an extraordinary read. It starts a little slow but builds. I was happy to have read some of his short stories first so I was prepared for the ride. It's a good one!

"The Sacred Book of the Werewolf" is one of those rare books that truly and completely defies classifiation.

Rather than a straightforward fiction or genre story, Victor Pelevin's symbolism-crammed book hops from one style to another -- Eastern mysticism, Russian urban fantasy, inhuman love story, wildly funny satire and postmodern exploration of Russia's place in a post-Soviet world. Despite the wealth of symbolism and a heavy dose of Buddhist philosophy woven in,, it's not stuffy or boring -- instead it's a wickedly funny personal journey that slowly slips into a bittersweet pathos as our shapechanging heroine learns some truths of the universe.

A Hua-li is a werefox -- an ancient, genderless creature with a hypnotic tail, a currently obscene name, who feeds off the energy emanated by humans during sex. She's also a virgin, and is starting to get an "old maid complex."

And to stay energized, she works as a prostitute in Russia -- she doesn't have actual sex with her clients, but manipulates them with her tail. But after some disastrous encounters, she finds herself being investigated by the Russian authorities -- and particularly by the handsome Alexander, a werewolf who transforms and molests A Hua-li. She's shocked but captivated by the young werewolf, and soon they're in the middle of a passionate affair. Yeah, great message to be sending.

The subject of the super-werewolf prophecy comes up when A Hua-Li's older sister and her flaky English aristocrat hubby come for a visit, with said hubby intent on becoming the super-werewolf himself. And A Hua-Li sees the werewolves being used to call oil from a dry well. But when a shocking change comes over her werewolf paramour, A Hua-Li must reexamine their relationship as she keeps her lover safe -- and reveal what the prophecy of the super-werewolf truly means.

Buddhism, wereanimals, aristocrat/chicken-hunting, mass media, Rainbow Streams, Nabokov, DVD sex games and hypnotic tails who contain all the truth of the universe. Victor Pelevin has a knack for bizarre postmodern fiction that is rarely seen outside a Haruki Murakami book -- and "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf" is like a brightly coloured mosaic of randomly sized and shaped pieces, which nevertheless manage to fit together. It's a weird and sometimes confusing ride, but somehow it all clicks at the end.

Along that ride, we're privy to A Hua-Li's intricate meditations on everything from sex to watermelons -- often described in carefully numbered lists. Pelevin fills his meandering storyline with literary allusions (hello, Nabokov!) and infuses it with plenty of wry humour ("We foxes are keen hunters of English aristocrats and chickens"). There's even a hilarious scene where Alexander and A Hua-Li contemplate what DVD movies they should play out as their sex games ("Listen, how old are you, twelve?" "Okay, let's forget the Matrix").

Yet he has a knack for hauntingly memorable scenes as well. Any creature as ancient as A Hua-li will have a sense of bittersweetness in their life, and her view of her lover's shocking transformation and his subsequent fear and confusion are striking. And as the book winds toward its esoteric end, Pelevin unrolls a heavy swathe of Buddhist philosophy that finally explains who/what the super-werewolf is, and what the prophecy means. Let's just say that it's not your average "chosen savior of Group X" prophecy.

And modern Russia, as Pelevin paints it, is all grimy cold urbanity speckled with American products and foreign businessmen. He injects a lot of symbolism (Alexander, the oil well, the super-werewolf, the hypnotic tails that can reveal the true nature of things) as well as a mocking satirical edge (a doomed aristocrat's nonsensical ramblings about how HE can become the super-werewolf without any enlightenment).

The one thing I didn't like? A Hua-li being raped by Alexander and immediately falling for him.

But A Hua-Li is a pretty oxymoronic character -- she can be ruthless and manipulative yet loving and sweet, has the enthusiasm of the young nymphet she pretends to be yet is ancient and experienced beyond even her own measure. And Alexander is her total opposite -- rough, brash, traditional yet modern, and possessing a straightforward mind that struggles with the more unusual spiritual paths of the "super-werewolf." And then there's A Hua-Li's sister -- merciless and wickedly funny, especially since she marries British aristos in order to "hunt" them.

"The Sacred Book of the Werewolf" is a bizarre crazy-quilt of genres -- a sort of symbolic Buddhist urban-fantasy satire, with a mingling of bittersweet and hilarious. Definitely a memorable read.

Victor Pelevin discards the basic novelists' creed --- to tell truth through lies --- as insufficiently complex for his aims. Instead, he tells lies through other lies, and those lies utter parables, and hidden in those parables lie bare and brunt truths, but only if you're willing to dig. Like his Russian comic predecessors (such as Gogol and Bulgakov), he is often impossible to pin down, but Pelevin takes this ambiguity to a new level in THE SACRED BOOK OF THE WEREWOLF, a baffling cultural collage in the service of a literary drug trip where philosophy meets erotica and everything in between.

This multi-layered book demands to be discussed after reading to settle the stomach. Perhaps its best achievement is its multiple-voiced, near-contradictory koan-like structure, for much like more traditional Zen Buddhist exercises (and yes, this is one too), it requires some amount of dialogue and contradictory thinking to be understood. That being said, Pelevin may have jumped the shark with this book, as the different facets of the novel's warped prism never fully come together. It's up to the reader to decide whether this is a postmodern masterpiece or a mess.

The plot (or what there is of one) centers on the millennia-old werefox A. Huli, who looks like a 15-year-old prostitute but possesses a fox tail that creates full-body hallucinations for her clients, allowing them to achieve erotic nirvana while she sucks their life force to sustain her immortality. She loves to allude to Nabokov (consider her Lolita-esque charade) and reads Stephen Hawking, who she confuses for/compares to Stephen King, when she's bored during clients' fantasy sessions. One of her clients, Alexander Sery, is immune to the powers of her tail, a mystery solved by his immediate transformation into a werewolf, after which he proceeds to rape her --- her first real sexual experience, which affects her as much as it does us "tailless monkeys." So begins a love affair that dabbles in philosophical meandering, a conspiracy involving Russia's oil industry, and sexual adventures that delve into the mysteries of our perception of the universe. Sounds heady and unmanageable? You'd be right.

Unlike some of Pelevin's previous work, THE SACRED BOOK OF THE WEREWOLF fails to blend its disparate topics, allusions and ideas into a cohesive whole. This may be a sign of increasing ambition; HOMO ZAPIENS (his most successful import in America, which also involves conspiracy theories and Eastern metaphysics) feels like a complete novel, though its critiques and ideas are smaller in scope. Also, unlike HOMO ZAPIENS, we are rarely rewarded for our diligent patience with Pelevin's tangents, speculation and flights of fancy --- he teases but fails to deliver. A. Huli's intellectual meditations only sometimes bear relation to each other; her metaphysical discoveries are stand-alone statements for the most part, which may leave the reader asking "so what?"

Her romance with Alexander is uninspiring in large part due to a general lack of character development. We learn a lot about A. Huli, but it's hard to say we know her by the end of the novel. She retains the cautious distance of a confessing sex worker, not to mention that of a fox. She admits that werefoxes have no personalities of their own (instead, they simply repeat all ideas they hear and develop new selves every generation or so), but as a foil for our times fails to be convincing. This supernatural Lolita that traipses through the centuries is neither sufficiently developed nor meaningful to make a lasting impact compared to Pelevin's better metaphors. Alexander is a clear archetype of the values and personality of old Russia (and what's happening to them), graspable in all the ways she is not. But his concrete solidity becomes almost too simplistic. Such is also the main problem deflating most of the humor in this text: it is usually impenetrably heady or blatantly obvious.

These flaws aside, Pelevin has clearly achieved something special in this work. His critiques of Russia's current way of life --- as always --- are spot-on. The werewolves mournfully supplicate to the bowels of Russian soil so she may bleed oil to be mined for petrodollars. A. Huli's discussion of cast-illusions and self-delusions do well to capture the crisis facing a Russia bumbling with capitalism and re-embracing totalitarianism, and it speaks of both the wool over Russians' eyes and their power to transcend it. And as the last few pages reveal, the entire novel may be a lesson to prepare us for transcendence, so we may understand the meaning of true love. At its best, THE SACRED BOOK OF THE WEREWOLF is a series of stomach-churning revelations, with Pelevin cackling all the way. Or we may all be getting hoodwinked. As deep as one reads, there are messages to be found, but the reader may just as easily find these messages to be nonsense, reinforced by A. Huli's almost bored tone and the lack of any actual narrative.

Whether THE SACRED BOOK OF THE WEREWOLF is a masterpiece or disaster of post-modern fiction (not to mention witty satire or dead jokes) can only be decided by the reader. It can be appreciated without being enjoyed and can be enjoyed without being appreciated. But if readers are willing to surrender completely to Pelevin's own web of illusion, they're in for a heck of a ride and are bound to come out of the trip a little changed forever. And perhaps more importantly for American readers: Pelevin reveals as much about our bewildering society as his own in a voice both alien yet oddly familiar --- his lampoons and more serious barbs may even be read as indictments of a West that has altered Russia forever. After all, there are werewolves everywhere.

--- Reviewed by Max Falkowitz

A love story that formulates into a personal velocity. A book told from the female, were-fox perspective. A unique supernatural world developed with strong philosophical exploration.

What I liked....
Fantastic lines like "...a man's weak spot is the fantasies that fill his mind." So much of this story made me stop and really focus on the meaning of what was being transcribed. The philosophical points of view can be followed easily with this main character. I can argue with most of them, but I was really just trying to enjoy the story.

The funny sexual inuendos kept the sometimes meaty reading light. I loved the idea of the two main characters hypnotically enjoying the comforts of one another with intertwined tails while adding subjective roll playing from any other movie except porn.


What I hated....
The Russian political references that seemed endlessly boring, lost in a story that centers around love and self fulfillment. I love a good ending but this one was sadly off key.

Very entertaining, very thought provoking. Good overview of idealism in philosophy. All the way through I kept thinking "where is he going with this?", which kept me turning the pages.