Feel-bad Soviet dark sci-fi comedy that is a little too clever for its own good, but I admire it a lot. What's not to admire about a disastrously inept and cuckoo Soviet space program, and the poor schmuck who wants to walk on the moon?

It's hard to articulate how I didn't enjoy it, but I think beneath post-modern clumsy prose is something pretty special. You first plod through a sort of inspiring coming-of-age story, wondering "Hunh, Omon's life isn't that funny all things considered..." and then it goes bananas. Without spoiling some of the most important twists, some pilots get their feet lopped off on [patriotic] purpose, and cosmonauts investigate their past lives. It takes some mighty courage to dedicate 15 or so pages to a Soviet boy's rant about his memories seeing Babylon, Ancient Rome, and more.

The best way to describe it, I think, is it's a brilliant idea and a mediocre book. If it was a Twilight Zone episode, I'd call it amazing. I'd love to see this in a TV anthology series. Pelevin may not be a master wordsmith, but he is a sick puppy and challenging writer, and I'll probably think about Omon Ra a lot more than books I actually liked.