The mysterious novelist who foresaw Putin’s Russia – and then came to symbolise its moral decay | Russia | The Guardian

Generation P imagines advertising, television and politics as the key tools that corrupt, secretive interests use to create a false reality. The novel’s hero, Vavilen Tatarsky, is an aspiring poet whose literary ambitions are scrambled by the Soviet collapse. In the free-for-all of newly capitalist Russia, Tatarsky goes into advertising, “translating” American slogans into Russian ones. (“Gucci for Men: Be a European, smell better.”) In typical Pelevinian fashion, this over-the-top satire of an already-over-the-top reality soon transmogrifies into an occult, psychedelic fantasy. High on mushrooms, Vavilen discovers that the Russian government is a virtual reality scripted by writers, acting in service of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar
— Read on www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jan/09/victor-pelevin-the-mysterious-novelist-who-foresaw-putins-russia-and-then-came-to-symbolise-its-moral-decay