Maya Pill

by Герман Садулаев, Carol Apollonio (Translator)

In the traditions of Victor Pelevin and Vladimir Sorokin, German Sadulaev's follow-up to his acclaimed I am a Chechen! is set in a twenty-first century Russia, phantasmagorical and violent. A bitingly funny twenty-first century satire, The Maya Pill tells the story of a mid-level manager at a frozen-food import company who comes upon a box of psychotropic pills that's accidentally been slipped into a shipment. He takes one, and disappears down the rabbit hole: entering the mind of a Chinese colleague; dreaming that he is one of the rulers of an ancient kingdom; even beleiving he is in negotiations with the devil. A mind-expanding companion to the great Russian classics, The Maya Pill is strange, savage, bizarre, and uproarious.

Genres: Russia, Fiction, Novels

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 7, 2013

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Street Art in Russia

What's it like, former comrades, living in Russia following the collapse of the glorious Soviet Union?

One sure-fire way to find out is to read German Sadulaev's 2008 novel, The Maya Pill, where we join Maximus Semipyatnitsky, an office worker, a middle-aged middle-manager for a frozen-food import company in St. Petersburg, who must deal with a carton of pink pills having Alice in Wonderland properties that the Dutch have accidentally slipped into their shipment of potatoes.

German Sadulaev provides much detail, laced with satire, relating to middle-manager Maximus and his everyday office life. However, in typical Russian epic fashion, Mr. Sadulaev expands out to explore profound metaphysical questions and compresses down to the deepest, darkest existential regions of Maximus's tormented soul. Ah, those Russians!

The Maya Pill has it all: social and cultural commentary aplenty as Maximus juggles his visions of Britney Spears and other Pop icons, dreams of his Khazar ancestors where he himself is a Khazar hero, pops hallucinogenic pink Dutch pills (oh, the places Maximus will go!), toils for his employer, Cold Plus, has a fling with the Goddess of Sex, Spring, and Fertility - and even does battle with Satin himself.

There's one particular humongous howler - The Red Banner Chorus serves as Maximus' wake-up call, blasting so loud, the music wakes up the neighbors in his apartment building who complain by banging on the water pipes. Oh, the bitter irony of listening in the early 21st century to a recording of that rousing communist song sung with full open hearts (here's a link where you can watch and listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh2mF...). The pride of the singers and tears of the audience make abundant sense when we think of their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents spending decades toiling in fields as peasant-slave farmhands locked into lives with no more freedom than a farm animal.

The Red Banner Chorus plays on as Maximus and his generation have been tossed out of the fortress of communist ideology and into a cultural sub-zero post-Soviet Siberian tundra to fend for themselves. Lots of luck, people! Oh, well, you can dream of getting a middle-management job where you can drive back and forth to the office. But what happens, when, like Maximus, you realize that dream office job is nothing more than a pile of crap, the play of maya?

The Maya Pill is a lively philosophic satire that will bring to mind Vladimir Voinovich, Victor Pelevin and Vladimir Sorokin. Special thanks to Dalkey Archive Press for publishing and Carol Apollonio for her excellent English translation and insightful Afterward. For lovers of fine literature, highly recommended.


Russian-Chechen author German Sadulaev, born 1973

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Senryu Review:

Danish potatoes
turn man into Khazar king
in wry, rambling prose

[Aaron McQuiston · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Maya Pill" has a great start and a great finish, but there is a lag toward the end that I had to push through. Part III really slags down with a alternate history section that does not really peak my interest. In this section, I spent time counting pages and just pushing through. This is kind of a shame because the rest of the book is entertaining, engaging, and funny. I am looking forward to more translations of German Sadulaev's work because there is a lot of promise in most of this book and contemporary Russian literature in general. With creativity and cleverness, "The Maya Pill" is a good read that is worth digging through the third part to get to the end.

[Paulo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Congrats to Sadulaev for creating such an entertaining book , with a complex mix of interesting subjects and a good touch of madness that made it absolutely delightful.
The Descriptions of the Khazar Empire - an intriguing and unknown issue that I had few informations about - was a great surprise . And the way it connected to the story was great.
This was the second book I read from the auctor , and since then , will wait for the next one.

[Kay Wilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goddamn.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read a translation draft by Carol Apollonio - I hope this sees the light of day someday in English. Sadulaev is a great writer, and this book is a funny and interesting example of the "office" novel, like Fight Club meets Dostoevsky, Sadulaev himself has described it. Mixed in with some Khazar history and mysticism, which I totally appreciate (and interestingly enough I've seen a lot of mentions of the Khazars in recent Russian literature--a topic I hope to look into further as I keep reading).

[!Tæmbuŝu]

KOBOBOOKS

Reviewed by The Independent (26 Mar 2014)

[Grachev · Rating 1 out of 5]

история показалось достаточно скучной. хазарская мифология притянута за уши, будто история Вавилона у Пилевина. После таблетки не захотелось больше ничего читать у Садулаева, к сожалению.