Omon Ra

Viktor Pelevin · b. 1962 · Russia

Originally Omon Ra (Russian)

Why it matters

A young Soviet cadet trains obsessively for a heroic one-way mission to the moon, only to find the cosmodrome's grandeur curdling into something stranger and far more sinister. Ideology's collapse played as absurdist tragedy by post-Soviet Russia's most elusive novelist.

At a glance

A brisk, linear plot carries the difficulty of decoding its layered ideological satire.