{"product_id":"9780811214346","title":"The Blue Lantern: Stories","description":"In a recent \u003cem\u003eNew York Times Magazine\u003c\/em\u003e feature article, Victor Pelevin was cited as \"almost alone among his generation of Russian novelists in speaking with a voice authentically his own, and in trying to write about Russian life in its current idiom.\" Since the publication of this collection of stories, \u003cem\u003eThe Blue Lantern\u003c\/em\u003e, Pelevin's books have been translated into many languages, and Pelevin himself has been touted as a major world writer. \u003cem\u003eThe Blue Lantern\u003c\/em\u003e, winner of the Russian Little Booker Prize, gathers eight of his very best stories. Various, delightful, and uncategorizable, the stories are highly addictive. Pelevin here, as in \u003cem\u003eThe Yellow Arrow\u003c\/em\u003e (New Directions, 1996), \u003cem\u003eOmon Ra\u003c\/em\u003e (ND, 1997), and \u003cem\u003eA Werewolf Problem in Central Russia\u003c\/em\u003e (ND, 1998), pays great attention to the meaning of life, in earnest and as spoof. In the title story, kids in a Pioneer camp tell terrifying bedtime stories; in \"Hermit and Six-Toes,\" two chickens are obsessed with the nature of the universe as viewed from their poultry plant; the Young Communist League activists of \"Mid-Game\" change their sex to become hard-currency prostitutes; and \"The Life and Adventures of Shed #XII\" is the story of a storage hut whose dream is to become a bicycle.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New Directions Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42599555563581,"sku":"9780811214346","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0603\/0838\/9949\/files\/9780811214346_p0.jpg?v=1771580287","url":"https:\/\/www.tatteredcover.mom\/products\/9780811214346","provider":"Tattered Cover","version":"1.0","type":"link"}