Omon Ra

Omon Ra (Russian: «Омон Ра») is a short novel by Russian writer Victor Pelevin, published in 1992 by the Tekst Publishing House in Moscow. It was the first novel by Pelevin, who until then was known for his short stories. Pelevin traces the absurd fate of the protagonist Omon, named by his policeman father (after OMON, Soviet and Russian special police forces, pronounced "Amon"), placing him in circumstances that are both fantastic and at the same time have recognizable everyday detail. Pelevin uses this story to illustrate the underlying absurdity of the Soviet establishment with its fixation on "heroic achievements", especially in those fields of human endeavor which could be favorably presented to the outside world—science, the military, and most significantly space exploration. The book met with a significant success in the early post-Soviet cultural landscape and continues to be reprinted. An excerpt under the name "Lunokhod" was published in 1991 in the magazine Knowledge is Power and in the collection Blue Lantern. A variation of the book was published in the magazine The Banner in 1992. In 1993 the book was awarded with two literary prizes, the "Interpresson" and the "Bronze Snail".