Omon Ra

Weird story but strangely addictive

This is a genius book! excellent translation, very funny and thought provoking

Nice condition, received quickly, enjoyed it

Soviet era-satire. Occasionally amusing.

Victor Pelevin's "Omon Ra", written in 1994, tracks the career path of Omon Krivomazov from his childhood as a stargazing child who wants nothing more than to fly in space, through his acceptance into the Soviet space program, his training as a cosmonaut where he is selected to be a standard-bearer of Soviet science and exploration. Omon Ra (as he comes to be called) is chosen to be the first Cosmonaut to be sent to the moon. But the devil is in the details and Omon quickly finds that life and his travel plans are not quite what he may have expected when he joined the space program.A lot of the pleasure from Omon Ra was from the twists and turns of the plot and the various revelations along the way and it would do harm to reveal more than the bare bones of Omon Ra's journey to the moon. Suffice it to say - the bare outline mentioned about does no justice to a book that is brilliantly subversive, funny, and thoughtful.I think the most memorable aspect of Omon Ra for me is Pelevin's style. I know that many people, when they think of Russian and Soviet literature think of dark foreboding where despair is the norm and where ones existence is set out in great detail in dense tortured prose whose many threads require all one's concentration to untangle. Pelevin is having none of that and in fact his writing style is fluid, easy to follow and most of all, humorous. To that extent he is more similar to Vladimir Voinovich than to any other Russian/Soviet writer I can think off.Pelevin's satire and his prose style is what make him, like Voinovich, so subversive. His story does not bang the reader over the head with a hammer (or sickle) to rail against the empty promises and fake myth-building upon which his nation is built. No need for that when making the reader laugh at the lunacy that passes for science and governance. Pelevin is more Swift or Twain than Zola or Dos Passos.Some may see this book as a parable limited in its application to the USSR. There's certainly something to be said for that idea. The book is, after all, written by a Russian about life in the USSR. I think people reading Omon Ra will come away chuckling at the absurdities of life in a now-extinct regime. However, I think they may also come away thinking that behind the myths any nation creates for itself there may lie an Oz-like man or group screaming "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." More often than not - where there is smoke there is also mirrors.Omon Ra was a pleasure to read. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

A wonderful slice of absurdist fiction: the protagonist, Omon, has always dreamed of going to the moon, but when his wish is granted and he joins the Russian cosmonaut program, he discovers that all is not as it seems.This is one of those marvellously inventive little books that accomplish a lot in a short time; of the books I've read, it reminded me most of Kristof's "The Notebook," for its style and its dead-pan, horrific black humour.

Omon is a typical Soviet boy growing up in a dreary suburb of Moscow with an absent mother, a drunken father and an uninterested aunt who takes care of him. Since his childhood he want to be a cosmonaut and he shares this dream with a boy from the neighbourhood, Mitiok. Together they apply for Flying School and even make it to the training for the space program. Gradually it dawns on them that the Soviet achievements in the air and in space are not as glorious as they are claimed to be: the space program has a whole new interpretation of the term "automation" which makes the people who have to carry out the "automated techniques" into instant heroes, but in a way you do not exactly want. In the end Omon visits the moon, but not in the way he had expected it to be...Pelevin wraps his criticisms on the Soviet society in a story which is at the same time hilarious, sarcastic and critical and makes you think of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller. Definitely worth reading.

Omon Ra is everyone who dreams to escape from tedium. When life is bleak and love runs on empty then a man or woman may as well dream of the moon. The boy Omon pined to be a cosmonaut and as these things are was not careful enough for what he wished for. When a young man he gained admittance into the elite Red Banner Flying School. It was here that began the state process of indoctrination and intimidation that eventually led to his blast off into the lunar skies. This story set in Soviet Russia is much more than just Russia's race to parity with the West (they put a man on the moon so can we). It's also about lunacy that is blind obedience to authority which is universal. Omon is set to die in his dodgy soviet spacecraft. Compliant youth agrees to give up this life so that leaders and rulers i.e. much older men who plan to live the full three score ten years can bask in the reflected glory of "our brave young men". If only the cause was truly noble.Pelevin does a good job of keeping the reader in the story unlike say in his other book Buddha's Little Finger. I can't say this is great writing but it is a very good think. There's a chilling pretty little paragraph where Omon opines that everyone knows fully well what's going on beneath their feet in the KGB building next door to the Children's World store where they are queueing to buy toys. Insights like this are treasure pods of information of soviet nirvana. Is it any different from the fact that we also know that slave labourers make many of our purchases or that our governments participate in activities that should not get any human into the kingdom of heaven yet we play along with feigned nonchalance. Long live the insidious power of ideology.