Viktor Olegovich Pelevin is a Russian writer, postmodernist, and recipient of numerous awards. He was born into the family of a lecturer at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University military department and the head of a grocery store section. For some time he lived in a communal apartment on Tverskoy Boulevard; later the family moved to its own three-room apartment in Northern Chertanovo, where, if the media are to be believed, the writer still lives and even registered as an individual entrepreneur at the local branch of the Pension Fund.

After graduating from a school with advanced study of English in 1979, Pelevin entered the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, majoring in electrification and automation of industry and transport. After graduation he remained at the institute, worked as an engineer at the department of electric transport, and studied in full-time postgraduate school there. He wrote a dissertation on the electric drive of a city trolleybus with an asynchronous motor, but there are no data on its defense. Nor, for that matter, are there any reliable confirmations that in the late 1980s the Buddhist writer served in the Air Force, as is sometimes mentioned on fan sites.

In 1989, the future winner of the Little Booker Prize and multiple nominee for prestigious literary awards entered the Gorky Literary Institute, but two years later was expelled—for losing contact with the institute, according to his own words. That same year he began collaborating with the magazine Science and Religion, for which he prepared materials on Eastern mysticism, and served as a staff correspondent for the magazine Face to Face. His first story was published at the same time: according to one source, “The Sorcerer Ignat and the People” in Science and Religion; according to another, “Grandfather Ignat and the People” in Chemistry and Life.

His debut collection of short stories appeared in 1991; a year later the novel Omon Ra brought him his first popularity, but true recognition—starting with the Little Booker—came two years later and only grew exponentially.

Five years later, the first Russian “Zen Buddhist” novel, Chapayev and Void, was published; in 2001 it was shortlisted for the famous Dublin Literary Award and brought Pelevin international fame. In 1999 the author presented the “nostalg