Pilnyak’s post revolutionary text is a tiny box of surprises. Structured around the brief life of the eponymous hero, it moves from Moscow to the deep Russian countryside, where Ivan Moscow is seeking to construct a factory that will produce unlimited nuclear energy. The fact that the novel is written in 1927 and the author was executed by Stalin in 1938, only adds to the unexpected nature of Ivan’s project, which is somehow connected to his love for an Egyptian mummy and the enigmatic Alexandra. Ivan fights in the revolution and dies in a plane crash, but the details seem incidental to a novel which feels like a forefather to the writing of Pelevin and incorporates in its 120 pages an interpretation of revolution, futurism, the conflict between urban and rural russia and its inherent mysteries and much more besides.
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