Generation "П"
Victor Pelevin
 The novel is set in Moscow in the Yeltsin years, the early 1990s, a time of rampant chaos and corruption. Its protagonist, Babylen Tatarsky, graduate student and poet, has been tossed onto the streets after the fall of the Soviet Union where he soon learns his true calling: developing Russian versions of western advertisements. But the more he succeeds as a copywriter, the more he searches for meaning in a culture now defined by material possessions and self-indulgence. He attempts to discover the forces that determine individual desires and shape collective belief in this post-Soviet world. In this quest, Tatarsky sees coincidences that suggest patterns that in turn suggest a hidden meaning behind the chaos of life. He first senses this hidden purpose when reading about Mesopotamian religious practices. Tatarsky’s quest is enhanced by the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, and vodka. His quest is further aided by another form of spirits: through a Ouija board, Che Guevera writes a treatise on identity, consumerism, and television. Eventually, Tatarsky begins to learn some truths—for instance, that all of politics and the “real” events broadcast on television are digital creations. But he can never quite discover the ultimate force behind these fabrications. When at last he reaches the top of the corporate pyramid, Tatarsky learns that the members of his firm are servants of the goddess Ishtar, whose corporeal form consists of the totality of advertising images. The firm’s chief duty is to make sure that Ishtar’s enemy, the dog Phukkup, does not awaken, bringing with it chaos and destruction. After a ritual sacrifice, Tatarsky becomes the goddesses’ new regent and, in the form of a 3-D double, her bridegroom. In the novel’s last chapter, Tatarsky’s electronic double becomes a ubiquitous presence on Russian TV. Tatarsky, who had tried to look past the false images presented on TV to see a true umediated reality, has himself been transformed into an illusion.