Cover of Buddha's Little Finger

Buddha's Little Finger

Russian novelist Victor Pelevin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most brilliant young writers at work today. His comic inventiveness and mind-bending talent prompted Timemagazine to proclaim him a "psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber-age." In his third novel, Buddha's Little Finger, Pelevin has created an intellectually dazzling tale about identity and Russian history, as well as a spectacular elaboration of Buddhist philosophy. Moving between events of the Russian Civil War of 1919 and the thoughts of a man incarcerated in a contemporary Moscow psychiatric hospital, Buddha's Little Fingeris a work of demonic absurdism by a writer who continues to delight and astonish.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 352 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Buddha's Little Finger? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Buddha's Little Finger. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Moscow to the End of the Line Shares russian, Russia, russian literature
  2. The Fur Hat Shares russian, Russia, russian literature
  3. The Compromise Shares russian, Russia, russian literature
  4. Summer in Baden-Baden Shares russian, russian literature, Russia

“People who read Buddha's Little Finger tend to reach for these next.”

  1. The Fierce and Beautiful World
  2. The Queue (New York Review Books Classics)
  3. Novel with Cocaine
  4. Pushkin House

“If you want more of the same (fantasy about buddhism), start with these.”

  1. The Sisters
  2. Conquered City
  3. Midnight in the Century
  4. The Courilof Affair

“If it was the russian that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Dream Life of Sukhanov
  2. Petersburg
  3. Monumental Propaganda
  4. The Last Summer

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Surface, Volume 1
  2. The Man with the Black Coat: Russia's Literature of the Absurd
  3. Winter Journal
  4. Stella Maris