The life of insects
Subtitle: a novel
By: Victor Pelevin ; translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield.
Contributors: Bromfield, Andrew.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 179
Subjects: Insects -- Fiction; Punk culture -- Fiction; Russia -- Fiction
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.