“Generation P” by Victor Pelevin

I did not expect much from this book going in. I had seen the movie adaptation a while ago and understood basically nothing. Just vibes, ads, post-Soviet weirdness, and some mystical nonsense happening on top.

Now I still only vaguely remember the movie, but at least I understand the plot better. Progress!

Mostly, this is a fictional depiction of post-USSR Russia, with a bunch of philosophical ideas thrown on top: advertising as religion, politics as television, identity as branding, capitalism as hypnosis, mythology hiding inside consumer culture, and reality itself being something produced by people who know how to sell images.

So, you know, light reading.

The fun part is that it is not really “about” advertising in the normal business sense. It is about a society where everyone suddenly lost one belief system and immediately got swallowed by another one. Soviet ideology collapses, Western brands rush in, and people who used to write slogans for communism now write slogans for soda, cigarettes, politicians, and gods.

I enjoyed reading it. It is very Pelevin: funny, cynical, clever, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes too clever for its own good, and then suddenly it says something so accurate you have to stop for a second.

Unfortunately, not many of my friends have read Pelevin, so I don’t have many people to talk about it with. Which is a shame, because this is exactly the kind of book that feels like it should be argued about at 1 a.m. with tea, beer, or whatever substance the book itself would probably turn into a metaphor.

Good book. Weird book. Probably much better if you have at least some context for 90s Russia and post-Soviet cultural whiplash.