The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

Viktor Pelevin. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf. Andrew Bromfield, tr. New York. Viking. 2008. xiii + 335 pages. $25.95. ISBN 978-0-670-01988-5

In The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, Viktor Pelevin, one of the most interesting Russian writers of the post-Soviet period, tells the story of a two-thousand-year-old werefox: a character from Chinese mythology who, in her modern incarnation, works as a virtual prostitute in Moscow. The authenticity of the fox's memoir is questionable. Its publication is contingent upon a process of double mediation: a text file found on the hard disk of a laptop computer discovered in a Moscow park that circulated among occult fringe groups and was published as a book. In the "Commentary by Experts," which is part of the fictional story, the text is identified...