Generation "P"

Generation "P" is the third novel by Russian writer Victor Pelevin, published in 1999. Its title refers to the letter "P", which the first chapter associates with Pepsi and with the Soviet generation raised on Western soft drinks, although critics have also linked it to Pelevin himself, to postmodernism and to a Russian obscenity. The novel was written in the Yeltsin years, in a Moscow marked by chaos, corruption and the rapid spread of consumerism after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The protagonist, Vavilen Tatarsky (Babylen Tatarsky in Andrew Bromfield's English translation), is a former student of the Literary Institute of Moscow who, once the Soviet system collapses, abandons his failed career as a poet and discovers his vocation in advertising, writing Russian versions of Western commercials. The more successful he becomes as a copywriter, the more he searches for meaning in a culture defined by material possessions and self-indulgence. His search takes him through readings on Mesopotamian religion, hallucinogenic experiences brought on by fly agaric mushrooms, cocaine and vodka, and séances in which the spirit of Che Guevara dictates a treatise on identity, consumerism and television.

As the story advances, Tatarsky realises that much of the politics and "real" news broadcast on television is digitally fabricated, yet he never manages to identify the ultimate force behind these fabrications. In the end he learns that the members of his firm serve the goddess Ishtar, whose body consists of the totality of advertising images, and that their task is to keep her enemy, the dog Phukkup, from awakening and bringing chaos. After a ritual sacrifice, Tatarsky becomes the goddess's ritual husband, and his electronic double appears everywhere on Russian television: the man who sought an unmediated reality ends up turned into an illusion himself.

The novel blends social satire, metafiction and Mesopotamian mythology, with constant allusions to the Tower of Babel and to the "Babylon" of the English title. Its central idea, delivered with irony, is that advertising works as a modern mythology that organises collective desires and beliefs. Generation "P" was widely read in Russia and became one of the most representative works of post-Soviet fiction. It has exerted considerable influence on contemporary Russian literature and was adapted for the cinema by Victor Ginzburg, released in Russia in 2011.