New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1998). Hardcover first edition - The second novel by this Russian author, one which follows the adventures and misadventures of two Russians and a khaki-clad visiting American. Set in "a sleazy Crimean resort town, where his characters eat, drink, make merry, make love... and turn into insects. This is no soft-focus allegory: the author is superbly specific about his entomological creations. 'Arthur and Arnold had turned into small mosquitoes,' he writes, "of that miserable hue of gray familiar from prerevolutionary village huts, a color that in its time had reduced many a Russian poet to tears." (William Davies) Sometimes the trio is depicted as human with buggy characteristics, and at other times as insects that walk and talk. Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield. In 1988 Pelevin was selected by The New Yorker as one of the best European writers under thirty-five. 179 pp. ISBN: 0-374186251.