A summary of "A Madman Named Emptiness" by Victor Pelevin

This book is a monumental collection of philosophical and mystical prose, published in 2020. It brings together the author’s classic stories, exploring the illusory nature of consciousness, the boundaries of the body, and the nature of death. The collection’s most memorable element lies in the paradoxical combination of harsh Soviet and post-Soviet everyday life with ancient Eastern teachings, cyberpunk, and brutal absurdity. The author masterfully blurs the line between dreams and reality, forcing the characters to wander through the labyrinths of their own minds.

Several of the works included in the edition brought the author recognition from the literary community. The collection "Blue Lantern," which gave its title to one of the stories, won the Booker Prize in 1993.

The mysticism of everyday life

The events open with the short story "The Sorcerer Ignat and the People." Archpriest Arsenicum comes to see Ignat. The guest hands over sheets of paper with texts about the cockroach Zhu and the madness that precedes death. The local men try to kill the sorcerer with rusty axes, but Ignat calmly vanishes into thin air. He is followed by the story of student Nikita Sonechkin from the short story "Sleep." The protagonist notices that the lecturer, with a yolk stain on his tie, and all the students around him are constantly sleeping.

Nikita learns to exist in a dream. Soon, the line between reality and slumber disappears completely. Nikita pricks his foot with a pin, trying to find someone awake to talk to. But his parents and the surrounding subway passengers are immersed in an impenetrable stupor. Engineer Lyubochka from "News from Nepal" works at the trolleybus depot. She reads a memo about the strange cultists of Kathmandu. On the radio, a radio announcer announces the beginning of the aerial ordeal.

Lyubochka realizes a terrifying truth. It turns out she and her colleagues are long dead. The souls of the dead mistake hell for the drab Soviet reality. Vera Pavlovna, the toilet cleaner from "Vera Pavlovna’s Ninth Dream," also undergoes a metamorphosis. Her friend Manyasha whispers the secret of existence to her. Vera transforms the tiled toilet into a luxury store with the power of her mind. Then, the clothes begin to smell like excrement. Vera strikes Manyasha with an axe.

Space collapses, and a filthy stream pours forth. The heroine floats on a globe amidst a dead metropolis. She stands trial by nameless demonic voices. The judges send Vera to serve her sentence in classic Russian prose. The boys at the pioneer camp from the story "The Blue Lantern" share eerie tales. They tell of a blue fingernail and a red spot. Pioneer Tolstoy logically proves to Vasya and Kostyl that they are all dead.

Illusions and Rebirths

The crimson shed number XII is endowed with consciousness in "The Life and Adventures of Shed Number XII." The structure sincerely dreams of bicycles, but its cruel owners load it with a fetid barrel of pickles. Recalling its freedom, the shed short-circuits its wires and burns down, only to soar into the sky as a glittering ghost. Childhood is examined through the prism of growing up in a prison cell in "The Ontology of Childhood." A boy explores the corridors, gradually realizing his total lack of freedom.

A man’s life is condensed into a single monologue in a story about a water tower. The protagonist recalls war, aging, and the agonizing fear of emptiness. Consciousness fades at the sight of a brick tower outside the window. Artist Niksim Skolpovsky, in his text "Built-in Reminder," demonstrates a vibrating mannequin to women from the Burevestnik factory. The clockwork robot turns on, rings a bell, and mechanically saws itself into pieces with a circular saw.

The story "Nika" masterfully confounds expectations. A lonely man describes an elegant young woman who goes out at night and has affairs with her neighbor. Only at the end, when Nika is killed by a car, is it revealed that she was a fluffy Siamese cat. In "On the Origin of Species," Charles Darwin sits in the hold of the HMS Beagle, literally fighting for survival. He bludgeons an orangutan and a gorilla to death with his bare hands, proving humanity’s right to be the pinnacle of evolution.

Beyond reality

Peasant Zhang the Seventh from the text "USSR Taishou Zhuan" hides in a barn from Chairman Copper Engels. A black car whisks him away. Zhang becomes a powerful official nicknamed "Comrade Sausage" and rules the country. His comrades throw him into a well, and Zhang awakens. Digging through the debris, he finds a rusty Japanese tank. The armored vehicle is swarming with ants, whose trails precisely replicate the streets of Moscow from his mystical vision.

The text "Mardong" describes a sectarian movement. The founder of the teaching, Nikolai Antonov, wrote that life should be perceived as the gestation of an inner corpse. Physical death is interpreted as a higher birth. The death of Alexander Pushkin is described as the creation of a perfect spiritual artifact. The sectarians chant the mantra "Pushkin is Pushkin-like great." After his death, Antonov himself becomes a petrified mardong on the side of the highway.

The hero of the story "Ukhryab," pensioner Maralov, becomes obsessed with the meaningless word "ukhryab." He feels as if the entire world consists of this threatening concept. Maralov flees the city, finds a deep hole in the snow, and voluntarily freezes to death. In the text "Middlegame," the hard-currency prostitutes Lyusya and Nelly board a bus with naval officers Vadim and Valera. On a snowy field, the sailors pull out a pistol and a chess set.

The criminals intend to brutally murder the girls. Nelly neutralizes the maniacs with a heavy metal effigy of Anatoly Karpov. In the apartment, it is revealed that both heroines were former male Komsomol workers. Vasily Tsyruk and Andron Pavlov have had their bodies surgically altered. The officers tearfully read a magazine about military discipline and flee into the woods. In "Bungee Jump," the sleepwalker Pyotr Petrovich strolls along the narrow ledge of a high-rise building. He mistakenly believes he is walking along a moonlit boulevard and conversing with his own reflection.

The Secret Springs of History

Workers Matvey and Pyotr in "Music from the Pillar" eat poisonous fly agarics. Pyotr cuts the loudspeaker cable. Suddenly, their altered consciousness is transported to the back of a German armored personnel carrier. They become Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. The Führer monotonously discourses on the meaninglessness of beauty and the utter illusory nature of the road. Documents from the secret society "Annenerbe" from the text "Kroger’s Revelation" explore the mystical roots of dictatorship.

The magician Kroger flies to Jupiter and sees Leo Tolstoy. The writer’s enormous print runs act as a destructive magical weapon. Rumors of a German "Weapon of Vengeance" alter objective reality through the power of popular faith. Researcher Stetsyuk, in his story "Reconstructor," discovers an abandoned archive. The papers prove that the country was ruled by Stalin doubles. The real dictator hid underground with a poisoned blowpipe. He was killed with a shovel by zookeeper Semyon Neplakha.

In "The Record of Wind-Seeking," the Chinese sage Jiang Zi-ya writes a detailed letter. After ingesting the powder of five stones, he understood the illusory nature of existence. The world is described as an ephemeral theater of shadows cast by hieroglyphs. The sage considers a stack of blank sheets of paper to be the most accurate book. The writer Yukio Mishima, in "Guest at the Bon Feast," commits ritual suicide. Bleeding and recalling the Hagakure, he realizes that his entire life he has been nothing but a mechanical doll.

The shaman Tyyma from "The Drum of the Upper World," along with the city businesswomen Tanya and Masha, revives a dead pilot. Major Zvyagintsev, from a downed German plane, rises from the earth and gives Masha a reed flute. The text of "The Drum of the Lower World" cynically instructs the reader’s brain. The lines command the subconscious to assemble a mental death laser from the energy of the paragraphs read.

The era of the new market

A computer virus in "Christmas Cyberpunk" infects the work system of Petroplakhovsk Mayor Vanyukov, nicknamed Shurik Spinoza. A random order distribution triggers a bloodbath on Central Street. The mayor is mauled to death by a bull terrier named Mumu, delivered in a package by the mad engineer Gerasimov. In the story "Time Out," the murdered bandit Vovan Kashirsky falls into a hellish coma. He is forced to cool the demon Yanlovan’s red-hot bronze frying pan with his buttocks.

The leader of the criminal gang, Kobzar, from "A Brief History of Paintball in Moscow," puts an end to criminal wars. He orders influential gangsters to shoot each other with gelatin paint. Those "killed" are forced to leave Russia forever. In "The Greek Version," ambitious banker Vadik Kudryavtsev arranges a classical wedding with his secretary, Tanya. Suddenly, a hitman wearing a gladiator helmet and bearing Odysseus’s badge appears and shoots the guests with a bow.

In the story "Akiko," internet user QWERTY visits a Japanese virtual brothel. He constantly pays for access to the geisha Akiko and the monkey Mao. The program extorts credit card payments. Ultimately, the hero is brutally blackmailed by intelligence officers, accusing him of viewing terrorist websites. The hero of the story "Ivan Kublakhanov" realizes he is a pure spirit. This eternal spirit simply has a strange dream about a man named Kublakhanov.

The moths Dima and Mitya from the text "Light of the Horizon" sit on a wall and contemplate a dung beetle. A wave of gray mist transports them into a vast black hole. The singularity takes the form of a gigantic stone head of an ancient god. The souls of the seven dead in the story "Focus Group" gather at the Glowing Creature. A-student, Desdemona, Teletubby, and Barbie order eternal bliss. The Creature shows them the Globotron — a device that mechanically synthesizes all pleasures. The souls touch the machine and disappear with a pop. The text concludes with the story "One Vogue." Two glamorous girls evaluate each other’s outfits in the restroom of a luxurious restaurant. Their vanity is measured in special microunits of emptiness.