A summary of "The Life of Insects" by Victor Pelevin

This book is a postmodern novel published in 1993. The chronotope, that is, the time and place of the action, is strictly limited to summertime Crimea, around an old resort boarding house. The characters in the narrative are subject to constant ontological metamorphoses. They live on the pages as ordinary inhabitants of the post-Soviet space and simultaneously act like real arthropods. American mosquito Samuel Sacker arrives at the seaside. He is warmly welcomed by local Russian mosquitoes Arthur and Arnold. The foreign guest resolutely refuses to take a rest from his journey.

Sam wants to immediately study the lives of the natives and conduct marketing — that is, find fresh blood. Three mosquitoes fly into the room of a sleeping man, thickly covered in prison tattoos. The insects land on the man’s skin. Sam pierces the epidermis with his sharp proboscis. The American drinks greedily until he passes out. He falls into a trance and aggressively attacks his companions. With great difficulty, Arnold and Arthur drag the distraught guest outside. Sam vomits blood onto the pavement, after which his mind clears.

Resort metamorphoses

Early one morning, a dung beetle father teaches his young son how to mold excrement into a perfect ball. The beetles respectfully call this round object by the ancient word "Ya." The father patiently explains to his son the laws of the scarab world. The philosophy lies in the monotonous pushing of the ball through the morning mist. Suddenly, a huge human foot in a red shoe descends from the sky. The sharp heel crushes the father to death. The boy weeps bitterly, but steels himself. He picks up his own ball and continues rolling it along the concrete path to the beach.

A female flying ant named Marina lands on a stone embankment. She hides in the coastal bushes and files off her wings with an ordinary file. The wings hinder her search for a mate. In a dark basement video bar, Marina watches a French love story, mesmerized. Inspired by the film, she digs a deep hole in the damp earth next to the garages. At the market, Marina gets into a brutal fight with another female over rotten vegetables, defeats her rival, and takes the food. At night, she sneaks into a boarding house. Marina cleverly steals a curtain from a window to make her home cozy.

Mitya, a night moth, flies toward the light of a local dance floor. He perches on a bench and watches the people dancing. Mitya notices their dead, automatic movements to popular music. He retreats into the darkness and meets another night moth, Dima. They stroll slowly along the seashore. Dima proves to Mitya that the alluring light on the dance floor is completely false. To prove his point, Dima magically extinguishes the streetlights. Mitya remains in the darkness and contemplates the nature of radiance.

Tragedies of insects

Sam and Arthur are sitting at a table in a summer cafe. A young green fly, Natasha, sits down with them. Soon, a drunken Arnold appears with Sam’s forgotten suitcase. Arnold begins to rudely insult Natasha. Arthur saves the situation and hits Arnold over the head with a half-empty bottle of champagne. Sam and Natasha escape the brawl on the highway. They hail an old car. The taxi driver complains about his hard life. Sam discreetly drinks his blood through the gray seat back. The couple walks off to a wild, rocky shore.

A red ant burrows a wide passage into Marina’s underground burrow. It’s the stern Major Nikolai, wearing a greatcoat and carrying a button accordion. Nikolai quickly becomes Marina’s husband. He leads his wife through a narrow passage into the snowy Magadan Opera House. During a performance, Nikolai accidentally falls on the carpeted steps and loses consciousness. His fellow majors instantly pounce on him and eat him alive. Marina manages to take home only a black button accordion and two severed legs wrapped in newspaper.

Mitya and Dima fly high above the cliffs. A huge bat is chasing them. Mitya panics and hides in a rock crevice, but the bat tries to reach him with its claws and emits a shrill whistle. Dima advises Mitya to stop being a sound the predator is picking up with its sonar. Mitya shifts his focus, discovering that he is actually a firefly. His hands begin to emit a clear blue light. The bat instantly loses its prey and flies away into the darkness.

Arthur and Arnold visit the blood donation center of an old insect named Archibald. Archibald constantly feeds on preserved blood from glass vials. His friends persuade him to relive his youth and fly over the sea. The old man agrees, but quickly tires and loses strength in the waves. He accidentally spots Sam and Natasha on a flat rock. Archibald swoops down to greedily bite Natasha on the thigh. Sam reflexively slaps his leg and kills the old mosquito. Arthur and Arnold watch their comrade’s death from the deck of a passing boat.

Life in manure and soil

Two marijuana bugs, Nikita and Maxim, are smoking marijuana. Nikita shows Maxim the dried plant material through a magnifying glass. It turns out that green insects are hiding among the grass. The friends are startled by a police jeep on the highway. They run away and hide in a wide concrete pipe at an abandoned landfill. Suddenly, the pipe is blocked by wooden planks. A powerful wind draws unbearably hot smoke inside. Nikita and Maxim realize that someone has rolled them into a giant cigarette and is now lighting it. A heavenly voice tells them to forget their fear.

Sam and Natasha take shelter from the rain at a glass bus stop. Sam gives a young fly some strong marijuana to smoke. They go to Natasha’s home, to a cramped, damp room. Behind a yellow screen, Natasha’s mother sits loudly reading a critical article about the work of Arkady Gaidar. Sam and Natasha make love right as their mother loudly declaims. The green fly asks to be taken to America. Sam considers it and decides not to take his casual acquaintance with him.

Mitya flies through thickets of night grass. He sees a rotten, glowing stump. A huge, multicolored swarm of insects crawls toward this tree and blindly worships its decay. Dima leads Mitya away, to an abandoned stone well. Mitya falls. During his long fall, he sees his entire life as a stack of cardboard circles. He physically senses the infinity of time in a single fleeting moment. Dima pulls Mitya back to the surface of the rocky mountain.

A cicada larva named Seryozha maniacally digs an underground tunnel. His entire long life is spent in the dark soil. He goes to work, draws plans on a drawing board, eventually transforms into a cockroach, and finds damp wads of money. Seryozha digs up an American visa and digs a tunnel right under the ocean. In New York, he returns to work in an office, buys a house, and ages inexorably. Seryozha digs down to the underground bar "Paradise." He breaks through the ceiling and emerges above ground in Crimea. He sprouts wings and joyfully sings his cicada song.

Finale on the coast

Marina lives in a locked burrow and grows incredibly fat. She eats Nikolai’s legs brought home from the theater and lays large white eggs. Out of sheer hunger, the mother devours her own immature children. Only one larva survives — Natasha. She is saved by quickly eating her own brother. The daughter learns to play her father’s accordion. Natasha spins a cocoon under the ceiling of the cramped cell. Then she hatches as a vulgar green fly in a short, shiny dress. She defies her mother’s plans, makes a passage upward with a shovel, and flies to freedom.

Dima tells Mitya terrible news. A cold blue corpse approaches him. The corpse is Mitya’s old self. The dying creature grabs Mitya by the throat. They wrestle fiercely on the edge of a dangerous cliff. Mitya gazes at his double with new magical blue vision. The aggressive creature transforms into a huge ball of dung. Mitya removes his hands from the dung and pushes the ball off a high cliff into the churning sea. In the depths of a dark cave, he finds an old mirror in a heavy wooden frame.

Sam and Arnold are busily discussing plans to buy a car with foreign currency. A small boy runs up to them with a ball of dung. The child asks to come to the tables of the outdoor cafe. Sam runs toward the restaurant in a panic. He sees Natasha motionless. A fly is firmly stuck to a yellow flypaper on a wooden table. Natasha is slowly dying and begs Sam not to tell her mother the bitter truth. The rude waitress rips off the flypaper and disgustedly throws it into the food waste. A glowing moth passes a red sailor ant, drops a beautiful scale from its wing, and disappears forever into the night.