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S. N. U. F. F.

Victor Pelevin,

Виктор Пелевин

3.99 · Rating details · 2,479 ratings · 130 reviews

Новый роман Виктора Пелевина - о глубочайших тайнах женского сердца и высших секретах летного мастерства.

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Hardcover, 480 pages

Published 2011 by Эксмо

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Jan 19, 2018 Evelina | AvalinahsBooks rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, society, dystopia, human-relationships, books-of-2018

If you haven't read Pelevin before, this will seem fresh and strong. If you have - it might not. The end result it all comes down to is good, but I wish it didn't take such a long and winding route to get to it.

S.N.U.F.F. tries to poke fun at everything that's currently wrong with society - the fake media, the political movements, the idiocracy - but does it in an incredibly cynical way (and perhaps tries to poke at too many things?) Every character is a caricature that's meant to disgust you, ...more

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Jan 05, 2017 WhatIReallyRead (Anna) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: thanks-but-no, fantasy, fiction, dystopia, russian-literature, sci-fi, audiobook, read-in-russian

I've already read 2 books by Pelevin before I picked up this one. And that made all the difference...

I feel like Pelevin writes the same book over and over again - his stories have the same structure, general outlines, ideas and similar characters. Only details and embellishments change.

At first I was entertained by his usual abundance of cultural references and satire, but soon the deja vu started to wear on me. The long philosophical monologues that blew my mind in his first book were now ...more

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Feb 11, 2017 Anna rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, scifi, dystopia

Despite the ironic subtitle A Utopia, Im pretty sure S.N.U.F.F. turned up on my to-read list via the dystopia keyword library search. And for once I actually consider it to be a dystopia! The setting is the vicinity of Siberia some hundreds of years in the future, after nuclear war and climate change have apparently decimated the global population. Those who remain are stratified into a literal underclass known as Orks and a privileged minority who live in Big Byz, a sort of fancy space station Despite the ironic subtitle ‘A Utopia’, I’m pretty sure ‘S.N.U.F.F.’ turned up on my to-read list via the dystopia keyword library search. And for once I actually consider it to be a dystopia! The setting is the vicinity of Siberia some hundreds of years in the future, after nuclear war and climate change have apparently decimated the global population. Those who remain are stratified into a literal underclass known as Orks and a privileged minority who live in Big Byz, a sort of fancy space station floating in the atmosphere. Periodically there are carefully stage-managed and media-friendly battles between the two, in which the Orks fight with futile pre-modern weapons and die in droves. The narrator is a freelance cameraman who covers and participates in these wars; his drone cameras is fitted with plenty of missiles. His narrative begins when he films an Orkish teenage couple for the run-up to a planned battle, which propels them to fame and gets him a paycheque. Damilola, the narrator, and most of the characters have remarkably little agency in their own story, however. The vast majority of the book essentially consists of world-building and quasi-philosophical discussion of the implications thereof. Only the last 15 pages (of 470!) introduce the possibility of change into this static world.

In principle I have no objection whatsoever to novels, especially dystopian novels, that place great emphasis on world-building. I think thoughtful world-building that reflects on current social, political, or cultural issues is part of the definition of dystopia. In this case, however, my two main reactions were: a) But where are you going with this? and b) I’m missing something here. The first was in response to the narrator’s role in introducing the Orkish couple, and thus the reader, to the privileged world of Big Byz (full name Byzantion). Many many pages are spent on tangents about how the world came to be like this, not all of which had a clear point. The stuff about GULAG being the equivalent of LGBT+ didn’t really go anywhere. On the latter front, I felt like something was being lost in translation. ‘S.N.U.F.F.’ is playful with language and rife with ironic puns, which reminded me slightly of reading Andrei Platinov’s Happy Moscow. Because that was written in the 1930s, however, it came it with explanatory notes. In this case, I felt like a sophisticated parody of Russia's media, politics, and culture was largely going over my head. Of course a certain amount applies more universally, for example:

”Why did the wars start?” asked Grim.
“They started when the infomancers of one clan or another declared that someone else’s reality was pernicious. They showed themselves movies about other people, and then pretended that those were news, worked themselves up into a frenzy, and then started bombing those others.”
“And did people believe the news?”
“Belief has nothing to do with it. The picture that was created by the infomancers became the truth not because people believed in it, but because it wasn’t safe to think any other way. What people were expecting from information wasn’t the truth, but a roof over their head. The surest way was to join the most powerful tribe, after learning to see the same visions as the infomancers saw. Things were just calmer that way.”

The use of linguistic world-building was interesting, in particular the use of the same word, ‘manitou’, for god, money, and computer screen. I was happy to just roll with this and wonder what significance it had in Russian, so felt a little disappointed when it was (over?) explained:

”In ancient times,” he said, “people believed that the screen of an information terminal glowed because a special spirit descended into it. They called the spirit ‘Manitou’. That’s why they called the screen a ‘monitor’ - ‘illuminated by Manitou’. And in Church English the word for manitou is ‘money’, that’s what it was originally. The prescriptions of Manitou explain it like this…”

The Slavoj Žižek reference was great, though: ‘This zhizhek seemed to carry a semantic loading almost greater than that of the words themselves’. And I loved this bit of dialogue:

”Grim,” she asked, “Do you believe in love at first sight?” [...]
“I don’t know,” said Grim, “I believe in death at first sight. I know for certain that happens. But I’ve only read about love at first sight.”

This is a dialogue-heavy book, which can be both a strength and a weakness. The most appealing parts for me were the arguments between Damilola and his sex doll Kaya about whether she is conscious. He says she isn’t; she says neither of them are because consciousness doesn’t really exist. She was the only character in the book with actual agency, which made up to some extent for the narrator’s depressing misogyny. (I’m pretty sure the sexism was making a point here rather than reflexive; that makes it less depressing to read, but still depressing.) Overall, I found ‘S.N.U.F.F.’ smart yet stolid, in part because I lacked Russian context and in part because it’s very light on plot. Pelevin strikes me as an intriguing writer though, so I’ll see if the library has any of his other books. ...more

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Aug 17, 2015 S.E. Berrow rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish, science-fiction, dystopia

This is a 'hard sci-fi' book, but while I'm up for a bit of a challenge, this book is verging so much on non-sensical that I actually found it to be unreadable (I do not speak Russian and only have access to the translated text, so I am uncertain as to how much of this is due to the translation). Whilst there are certainly a number of made-up or amalgamated words (like 'discoursemonger'; one who stirs up discord amongst the people), the real confusion comes from recognisable words from 'Ancient This is a 'hard sci-fi' book, but while I'm up for a bit of a challenge, this book is verging so much on non-sensical that I actually found it to be unreadable (I do not speak Russian and only have access to the translated text, so I am uncertain as to how much of this is due to the translation). Whilst there are certainly a number of made-up or amalgamated words (like 'discoursemonger'; one who stirs up discord amongst the people), the real confusion comes from recognisable words from 'Ancient Times' (our present) that are substituted to mean something else. There are people called Torn Durex, reference to things called sputniks (still not sure what these are), Manitou can mean 3 things - God, computer, money etc. etc.

There was also an overly cynical (and slightly problematic) tone to this book that I just didn't like. For example, the author taking a jab at overzealous feminists raising the age of consent to 46, and philophiles (defined as those who are sexually attracted to dolls, but that would be a pediophile so it's not even correct) being given equal rights to heterosexuals and homosexuals. The usual stuff about society being so shallow, sex-obsessed, all media coverage is evil blah blah blah is just so overdone and predictable now (and not, in my opinion, accurate). The initially interesting elements regarding the fusion of the military and the media, and Big Byz (the 'offworld' Byzantion, supposedly a satire of modern-day Russia) and its warmongering in the technologically disadvantaged Urkaina (comparisons to Ukraine are easy to make) were actually some of the dullest and opaque parts of the book.

Reading it is like pulling teeth and I just find my mind just drifting over the words, not actually taking any interest in what is being said. There is no plot and no characters worth paying attention to, so sadly, I have to put this book down and move on to something else. Not my cup of tea.

Note: I wrote this review late at night in a kind of stream of consciousness fashion, so apologies if it's difficult to follow; I appreciate the irony. That being said, I still think my review is easier to follow and makes more sense than this book. ...more

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Jan 28, 2015 Decadentia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

First I was a little disappointed. You know, I really like other books of Pelevin, but it was like: "Yeah - yeah, he's just another one imperial guy, who calls ukrainians orks created just to be hated". But I kept reading and then new and new horizons was appearing like flashes of light in my brain. And then was this unexpectedly bright finish part (like a light of Monitu))).. I don't know, maybe I can call it a catharsis, but it feels almost like I was imagined a buddhist enlightenment)

Yeah, ...more

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Jan 22, 2015 Alex Zakharov rated it really liked it

One of the better ones by him. Two big themes are explored in parallel - the usual clever analysis of media, ideology, brainwashing and the politics of submission and a more nuanced AI-flavored relationship with a custom-built and highly-configurable bio robot. The exploration of the latter is what made the book worthwhile for me - think of Spike Jonze's 'Her' but in a full-bodied (and very hot) manifestation. As you can imagine configuring your girlfriend for uber-high IQ and spirituality while ...more

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Oct 12, 2016 Jon Knight rated it did not like it

NB: English edition. First Pelevin I've read and probably the first contemporary Russian SF I've read.
- Rampant deeply unpleasant misogyny and hate for other groups, endless speeches to the reader.
+ Some interesting ideas, rather ham-fistedly put across and some fun playing with language that must have given the translator fits.
Reminds me of early 90s Western SF (maybe early Zindell?)

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Jan 23, 2012 Sidhartha rated it did not like it

Very disappointing. It should have been a comics rather than a novel. It would have been much more effective.

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Jul 20, 2018 Natalia Yaremenko rated it it was amazing

Shelves: russian-contemporary

S.N.U.F.F. is great! I simply adore Pelevin's feminine characters. Very fresh and sharp. I wish I read this first and then IFuck. I heard some women got insulted by this book for a particular insult of women nature or something. Totally disagree - in my opinion it's very flattering for women. Bitchy women, smart women, independent, straightforward and irresistible! :) And Pelevin is such a fierce romantic.

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Jul 07, 2019 Artem rated it it was amazing

This particular book explained me much about my life. Thanks, Viktor Olegovich))

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May 24, 2016 Gem BookEater rated it did not like it

The blurb for this claims that "S.N.U.F.F. is a superb post-apocalyptic novel, exploring the conflict between the nation of Urkaina, its causes and its relationship with the city 'Big Byz' above. Contrasting poverty and luxury, low and high technology, barbarity and civilisation - while asking questions about the nature of war, the media, entertainment and humanity."

It centres around Damilola Karpov - a pilot from the huge sky city floating above the land of Urkaina. He's a drone pilot whose The blurb for this claims that "S.N.U.F.F. is a superb post-apocalyptic novel, exploring the conflict between the nation of Urkaina, its causes and its relationship with the city 'Big Byz' above. Contrasting poverty and luxury, low and high technology, barbarity and civilisation - while asking questions about the nature of war, the media, entertainment and humanity."

It centres around Damilola Karpov - a pilot from the huge sky city floating above the land of Urkaina. He's a drone pilot whose just spent his life savings on a very sophisticated sexbot. For a living he both films events in Ukraina and creates situations to film, situations that might fill a few minutes of news for Big Byz Media but will change the lives of those involved.

Grim and Chloe are a young couple falling in love when Karpov's drone uses them to make a story and start a war. Chloe is stolen to become a sex slave while Grim joins the Urkaina army. Thereafter the story follows Grim and Karpov through the ensuing war.

I didn't finish this book. I found the inherent misogony in it deeply disturbing an I felt more uneasy with every page I turned. I hoped at first that the awful attitudes towards women would be mocked through these pages, but by the time I was over a third of the way through I knew it was too late. When a 'psychiatrist' in these pages states that "women are bitchy to interrupt a man's natural inclination to leave them by confusing them" I couldn't stomach anymore.

Even if it does denounce those attitudes in the ends it is too prurient and persausive for some of that glamour not to stick to this books intended audience - young men that have grown up gaming and watching superhero movies.

I've said before on this blog that Orion are one of my favourite publishers, they've let me down occaisionally but not every book is going to be to everyone's taste. This is deeply disappointing though and I hope they never publish anything like it again.

1 bite - for the cover which I think you'll agree is gorgeous!

NB I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in return for an honest review. The BookEaters always write honest reviews ...more

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Sep 13, 2017 Ira Therebel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: russian-language, science-fiction, fiction, contemporary

As I have said before Pelevin seems to always go for the same topics when writing a new book. He just creates a new plot which doesn't matter as much as the dialogues and goes for the same issues. Yet I really liked this book. Maybe partially because I gave myself 3 years break from his books. It is a good book otherwise as well. It took me some time to get into it but then I had trouble putting it down.

In this book he once again makes a philosophical satire of the world we live in and what it ...more

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May 29, 2017 Marc Nash rated it really liked it

Having read almost all of Pelevin's novels, this is by far my favourite of them. A post-apocalypse world which sees two societies divided from one another by class and the technology available, which the superior society (Big Byzantion or BB as in Big Byz) uses to bond themselves in tight cohesion by portraying the other society the Orks in Ukraine (get it?) as inferior and a threat. It's a wickedly funny satire on media representation and choreography, where myth is presented as truth; even the ...more

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Aug 03, 2013 Jūratė rated it it was amazing

Read it wisely. Pelevin has good understanding of some concepts and unnerving straight writing style. When i'm thinking back about this book and it becomes better and better when observing some modern situations..like talking with a friend who is interested and has deeper feeling in current things in UA-RU spheres. Without being reserved i want to tell that i'd praise and praise and praise him because he'd become such an artist-friend which i don't have in real life. In his interviews he tells ...more

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Jan 27, 2016 Igor Clark rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Only 4 rather than 5 stars because it's really quite slow to get going. It's absolutely worth it, if you're a Pelevin fan, as it definitely gets there, and beyond - but there were are few times in the build-up when I thought "come on Victor" which hasn't really happened elsewhere. Overall though, pretty special.

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Oct 08, 2012 Kirill rated it liked it

I read a comment somewhere I don't remember that since Pelevin has contractual obligation with his publisher to produce at least one novel per year, his latest novels seem like they've been forced.
This speculation and most likely little piece of slander does sound awfuly believable. Look forward to his next book to refute these lies.

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Jul 31, 2016 Uri Kurlianchik rated it it was amazing

A brilliant science fiction satire that offers and incredibly cynical and yet hard to refute model of where the world is headed right now. It's funny, it's cruel, it's creative -- it's a must read for any fan of the genre.

(and yes, there is an English translation)

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Feb 15, 2013 Searge Boremchuq rated it really liked it

Shelves: t-tvam-asi

I like this book!
It's more deeper then about orks and humans. More deeper then most critics thought.
It's about postapocalipsys and human nature as it is.

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Oct 16, 2013 Oksana Burganova rated it it was amazing

Stunning. Genious. So far from reality, so true to life. Recommended.
I have no idea if it's translatable into any other language of the world, but it is something....really something.

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Apr 09, 2012 Eric added it

Challenging reading. On the one hand, incisive. On the other, sometimes a bit obvious in its metaphorical criticisms of shallow elements of modern society.

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Mar 21, 2020 Rose rated it liked it · review of another edition

I haven't really finished this book. I got to page 126 and just... didn't want to continue. It's not like me to give up on a book before I reach the end. I hate starting books and not finishing them - abandoning a story just doesn't sit right with me - partly I sort of have it in my head that if you don't finish a story that world just gets left, frozen in place, and partly because I don't think you can properly pass judgement on a story until you've read the whole thing. In this instance, I haven't really finished this book. I got to page 126 and just... didn't want to continue. It's not like me to give up on a book before I reach the end. I hate starting books and not finishing them - abandoning a story just doesn't sit right with me - partly I sort of have it in my head that if you don't finish a story that world just gets left, frozen in place, and partly because I don't think you can properly pass judgement on a story until you've read the whole thing. In this instance, however, I've had the book sitting beside me on the desk for ages, waiting for me to pick it back up, and I can't make myself do it. I decided to take a break from the book to read some other things, and after each book I've told myself I'll go back to this one next, and that was about 5 books ago. Every time I look at the book, I just don't want to pick it up. There's no particular reason for it. I've finished much worse books. The idea of the book is novel, it's funny in places, and it seems as though that first hundred-odd pages are setting up threads that will tie up in an interesting and satisfying ending. In spite of all of that, I just don't want to read any more of it. The only explanation I can think of is the characters. I don't find any of them appealing or relatable - and as a result, I don't care enough about what happens to them or their world carry on. Perhaps this has more to do with me than the book - the story seems aggressively political (almost as though it's more about the ideology it aligns with than any of the actual characters to whom events happen - perhaps another reason I am put off) and I'm not in the mood for that at the moment. Perhaps I will return to this book at a later date and give it another go but for now, I'm turning my attention to books that I feel compelled to pick up and read. Also, since I haven't read the book to the end (and therefore haven't seen where all of this is going), it does strike me as problematic that the only two female characters (neither of whom are very prominent) are, respectively, a gold-digging damsel in distress and a sex robot whose 'bitchiness' is set to maximum. Perhaps later in the story these characters come into their own and it all makes a bit more sense - it's entirely possible that this is just an impression I've ended up with because I'm missing context - but what I've seen so far has not endeared me to the book at all. ...more

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Feb 15, 2019 Thomas Hale rated it liked it · review of another edition

This took me almost 2/3 of the book to properly get into, but I found the last act very satisfying. As a far-future vision of a grim cargo-cult media theocracy, it's intense and scathing and bitter. But there are far too many jokes or satirical swipes that landed awkwardly for me. I got tired of wondering "Is this piece of narration lazily sexist because it's meant to show how warped this society's gender politics are, or because it's just an easy gag?" Even though the protagonist/narrator is ...more

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Jan 19, 2018 Josefine rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, sci-fi

A mix of dark postmodern philosophy trolling and media age satire. It's fun to read if you like jokes made of quirky mash-ups of cultural debris floating around aeons after 'our' world has passed. The characters are boringly complex stereotypes and inspire little sympathy. Two-thirds into the book, the story has surrendered to endless monologue, turning into a melancholic black hole dissecting the structure of the dystopian world the self-loathing idiots find themselves in. Far more complex than ...more

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Sep 15, 2018 Brian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Pelevin kicks your teeth in

Merciless, this guy, and makes you laugh (even in translation!) as he wallops you with profound observations of the human condition. If you like WSBurroughs, punk rock, Buddhism, and political agnosticism (because humans never get that right) then this is a book for you. As are all of Pelevins novels, starting with the amazing Oman Ra, to which this is the spiritual heir. ...more

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Dec 13, 2019 AK rated it really liked it

Way better than a lot of Pelevin's recent stuff. I actually loved this. I was frustrated that he had to resort to sticking so much of his personal philosophy into monologues, which in retrospect is something he does not infrequently, but the ideas worked here and I really enjoyed it.

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Mar 17, 2017 Andrew Booth rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: shelved-it

Saw this on the shelf in my library. A real hard slog, not a relaxing read. A dark and dismal world full of characters I can't empathise with, and a subject matter that is troubling at best. I stopped reading after 50 pages.

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Jan 21, 2018 Calvin Cummings rated it really liked it

The end of the book kinda left on a cliffhanger a second book is much needed to tie up loose ends which unfourntley did not come :c

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Jan 05, 2018 Catherine Sweeney rated it did not like it

Awful couldnt finish it ...more

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Aug 31, 2017 Jakoba rated it it was amazing

Pelevin in his own special way explains love story between man and woman, which was created by his requirements.... and whats happened after.
I loved it...we still have no idea what we want =)))

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Aug 07, 2012 Tanya rated it really liked it

An often hilarious, and at times uncomfortably biting romp through a distopic future divided into "humans" and "orcs", who are mainly distinguished by the kind of illusionary reality they find themselves stuck in. Which isn't to say that the illusion masks effectively the distribution of power or the brutality with which said distinctions are achieved. This isn't really a book to be read for the characters - unlike, say, Chapaev I Pustota, or DPP, it's hard to get attached to them, or to ...more

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About Victor Pelevin

Victor Pelevin

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Victor Olegovich Pelevin is a Russian fiction writer. His books usually carry the outward conventions of the science fiction genre, but are used to construct involved, multi-layered postmodernist texts, fusing together elements of pop culture and esoteric philosophies. Some critics relate his prose to the New Sincerity and New Realism literary movements.

RU: Виктор Пелевин