Manufactured in the United States of America
New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper.
First published as a Pearl (NDP1214) by New Directions in 2011
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited
Design by Erik Rieselbach
Set in Albertina and Frutiger
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pelevin, Viktor.
[Zal pojuwih kariatid. English]
The hall of the singing caryatids / Victor Pelevin ; translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield. — 1st American pbk. ed.
p. cm.
“A New Directions Pearl.”
I. Bromfield, Andrew. II. Title.
PG3485.E38Z3313 2011
891.7344—dc23
2011023260
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
THE NEW DIRECTIONS PEARLS
César Aira, The Literary Conference
Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing
F. Scott Fitzgerald, On Booze
Nikolai Gogol, The Night Before Christmas
Federico García Lorca, In Search of Duende
Javier Marías, Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico
Yukio Mishima, Patriotism
Victor Pelevin, The Hall of the Singing Caryatids
Joseph Roth, The Leviathan
Tennessee Williams, Tales of Desire
Forthcoming
Roberto Bolaño, Antwerp
Robert Walser, The Walk
"Mr. Pelevin is certainly an unusual and strange writer, one with the kind of mordant, astringent turn of mind that in the pre-glasnost era landed writers in psychiatric hospitals or exile."
––The New York Times
"Victor Pelevin is the real article: a writer whose imagination dances on the heads of the rustiest pins in history, while maintaining a likably zany manner."
––San Francisco Bay Guardian
"A master absurdist, a brilliant satirist of things Soviet, but also of things human."
––Spin
Born in Moscow in 1962, Victor Pelevin got a degree in electro-mechanical engineering from the Moscow Power Engineerings Institute before studying at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. Pelevin's first story was published in 1989 and his collection The Blue Lantern won the Russian Little Booker Prize. A notorious media recluse, Pelevin prefers to spend time in Buddhist monastery retreats when he is not writing. A journalist once invited him to lunch and secretly recorded and published their entire conversation. In 2006 Pelevin posted all his published work up to that point online. His latest novel, Pineapple Water for a Beautiful Lady, was published in Russia in 2010.