Summary
Viktor Pelevin: Čapaev and the Emptiness
Čapaev and Petka, the heroes of traditional Russian anecdotes, are the main characters of this novel, but in slightly different roles. Čapajev, normally a war leader, is more like a sorcerer, that is, he is one of the avatars of Buddha. His colleague Petka in the novel is Petar Praznina, a decadent poet and monarchist by ideological conviction who, by a play of fate, becomes a commissar in Čapajev's division. The novel is based on the parallelism of two actions, one of which takes place in Russia immediately after the revolution, and the other in modern times. In modern times, Petar is being treated in a psychiatric clinic where he is convinced that the other reality is just a product of his sick mind. The contemporary part of the novel is filled with popular Russian myths and archetypes, embodied in the characters of (alleged) lunatics in a psychiatric clinic. At the end of the book is the "Demeter" appendix, which contains brief notes about the real heroes who appear in the novel and excerpts from various interviews with Viktor Pelevin.
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