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Summary: Geoff look
Review: "Oman Ra", by Victor Pelevin engages it's readers with anecdotes exploiting the lack of sophistication on projects related to the Soviet space program. I reccommend this book for many reasons. This book is beautifully written and it flows with excellent word usage that consists of many layers. Pelevin also creates an eerie sense of humor(dark humor). Dark humor is shown when Henry Kissenger visits Russia. The Russians, who want to leave a good impression on the U.S show Kissenger (an american), their hunting skills. With no game to hunt, the Russians dressed a small boy up as a bear and killed him as if a he was an animal. The book is also exciting and compelling. This is shown through Oman's different paths he chooses to take. I recommend "Oman Ra" to anyone who seeks a different wild and inventive story.
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Summary: A surreal look at Soviet culture
Review: "Omon Ra," by Victor Pelevin, tells the story of a young man who enters the Soviet cosmonaut program. The novel has been translated from Russian into English by Andrew Bromfield. This is a bizarre, surreal novel that vividly evokes Soviet culture and ideals. There are some really grotesque and absurd scenes, and some vivid visual images.
Rating:
Summary: A surreal look at Soviet culture
Review: "Omon Ra," by Victor Pelevin, tells the story of a young man who enters the Soviet cosmonaut program. The novel has been translated from Russian into English by Andrew Bromfield. This is a bizarre, surreal novel that vividly evokes Soviet culture and ideals. There are some really grotesque and absurd scenes, and some vivid visual images.
Rating: 
Summary: The best of his selections
Review: A biting satirical look at the upside down Kafka-esque world that all Russians had to inhabit for seventy odd years. Victor Pelevin pulls it off with hilarious wit, showing off the absolute indifference to human life that is a trademark of Communist societies; and he makes you laugh out loud while doing so.
Of all his books, I feel this is his strongest. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Splendid Book, Excellent Author
Review: First, let me start by saying that the cover picture does have some meaning, and its connected to the title.I found the authors style very cynical and sarcastic towards Russia and what it stood for. Everything about Russia in the communist era is miserable for him. There is even snide remarks about asians. In communist times I could safely say that Russians were anti-semetic. The lately deceased Communist Utopia was a blessing for his writing, for that's how he found infamy..As we know the USSR stopped living in 1991, he wrote this book in 1992. Victor Pelevin is every bit Russian though.
Omon Ra is about the Soviet Union in the days when they were waging a battle with the west. They wanted to be the best at everything. They never did things by half..and thoughts of world domination. So, this is the story told through the eyes of one Omon Krivomazov, a young Soviet obsessed with space flight. It leads him to "Rocket Camp" even after that, his willingness to sacrifice his life for his country, being told to, mind you. He then enters a KGB space training school. The only problem is,that the Soviets really cant send anyone to the moon. They don't have the technology. Everything is a falsehood. Everything is cheap and amuterish, but Omon doesn't know this. Even if it was to get to the moon, there is no way of coming back. He understands this. So, all is set. They drug him, to make things easy for him. Blast off.... He feels the shaking and vibrations. He is in space, for what seems eternity -20 days. He finally lands, but he has to pilot a moon walker. He pedals and pedals. Hhe has only food for a few days. Finally he gets to the mark they told him to reach. He has to get out. He has 3 minutes to live, but just in case he cant handle it, they gave him a gun to shoot himself. He pulls the trigger and it misfires. He says "what the heck..i will take my helmet off and just die". But he hears a gunshot, then another. He is scared. Someone is shooting at him. But on the moon? I can say that reading his work was somewhat difficult to classify. It is rather less like waking, but more like high quality dreaming. Its that fantastic. I implore you to read.
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Summary: pelevin is cool
Review: get your hands on anything this guy wrote. hope the translation does justice - i read it in russian. pay, beg, threaten, do whatever it takes for an english translation of "Generation P", his latest. modern marketing, apocalypse, virtual reality and babylonian mysticism, with a heavy dose of hallucinogenics mixed in. if you thought "omon" was good...
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Summary: Pelevin
Review: Get your hands on his books. Now. The man is just -so- good. Of all the Russian writers of the present time, this one's by far the best - the style is unbeatable, the sarcasm is sparkling and the feel is simply fantastic. If the translation is good enough, you are guaranteed to get that -oh-he-said-just-what-i-always-knew-but-could-never-tell- feel all the way through any of his books. Although Omon Ra might not be the best choice to start with for an international reader -some of the book is understandable only in the context of the Russian national identity- it is still just as excelent as everything Pelevin does.
Rating:
Summary: Makes Kafka look stodgy
Review: 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.
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Summary: A Surprise Find
Review: I loved the story, it was funny but the more I thought about it after I put down the more frightening the premises of story became. Imagine if Joseph Heller wrote Capricone One; what you would get is something very close to Victor's Pelevin's Omon Ra. My hat goes off to Andrew Bromfield for his translation of the story; I had to keep checking the cover to make sure I was reading a translation; his work was transparent.
Rating:
Summary: shattered self-identity
Review: I would reccomend this book to anyone who enjoys parody and especially to anyone who enjoyed Catch-22. Pelevin's book is a deeply funny and deeply heart-breaking commentary about self-identity, both personal and national. It is smart without being self-consciously so, its themes are universal, and the protagonist and his journey are unforgettable.
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