num_pages: 179
description: Set in a crumbling resort hotel on the Black Sea, the novel follows the misadventures of the Russian duo Arnold and Arthur and the khaki-clad Sam, a visiting American. The twist is that these characters are depicted alternately as human beings and as insects: now they are humans with buggy qualities; now they are insects that walk and talk. As they forage, quarrel, joke, and suck blood in the squalid rooms of the old hotel - and on the bodies of their hosts - they invariably get into trouble. In one chapter, a couple of hemp bugs suddenly find themselves being smoked in somebody else's pipe; in another, two moths flitting around a streetlight discuss the meaning of life in Beckett-like dialogue.
language: English
title: The Life of Insects
titlecomplete: The Life of Insects
genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Short Stories, Philosophy, Literature, Novels, Contemporary, Russian Literature, Fantasy, Russia
ratings_count: 4323
awards: awardedAt: 1420099200000
name: Metų verstinė knyga
publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux