P5: Farewell Songs of Political Pygmies of Pindostan

7 hrs. 16 min.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Language Russian

Author Viktor Pelevin

Narrators Vladislav Kopp, Pyotr Korshunkov, Elena Grep, Kirill Radtsig, Vadim Maksimov, Sergey Vostretsov

Narrator Vladislav Kopp

Narrator Pyotr Korshunkov

Narrator Elena Grep

Narrator Kirill Radtsig

Narrator Vadim Maksimov

Narrator Sergey Vostretsov

Description

The number “five” and the familiar letter “P” for Pelevin turned out to be magical symbols. The book contains five works: “The Hall of Singing Caryatids,” “Feeding the Crocodile of Khufu,” “Necroment,” “Friedman’s Space,” and “Assassin.” All the texts are united by a common idea, yet each of them is an independent work.

The Hall of Singing Caryatids
The main heroine, Lena, gets a job in a secret brothel for oligarchs, where she and other girls, in the absence of clients, must portray sculptures of caryatids. To keep them completely motionless for a sufficiently long period, they are given a drug “Mantis-B,” made from praying mantises that possess the required quality. But as a result of an unexplored side effect, they also acquire the instinct characteristic of a female mantis: to devour the male after mating.

Feeding the Crocodile of Khufu
Three people travel by car along a foggy highway in southern France, intending to see a certain magician. The audience is dissatisfied with his tricks—especially since one of the three had been exposing every trick out loud. But the recording of the magician on an audiotape—after the heroes listened to it—creates a connection between them and Ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Khufu, and the legend of his crocodile, which unexpectedly affects the ending of the story.

Necroment
A story about a general of the GAI (traffic police), who killed his subordinates (the Ministry of Internal Affairs staff) for occult purposes, cremated the corpses, and hid the ashes by adding them as an “ecological additive” to the material of “lying policemen.”

Friedman’s Space
Professor Potashinsky, a physicist, investigates strange effects connected with the transfer of large sums of money. He discovers “Friedman’s space,” into which rich people fall and which changes time and space in a way similar to black holes, so that an outside observer cannot observe the events occurring within it.

Assassin
A story about a boy, Ali, who in early childhood ends up in a high-mountain fortress where they turn him into a hired killer (an assassin)—and from which, in the end, he escapes. The story is accompanied by several “commentaries”: those of a Sufi, a historian, a cultural critic, a lawyer, and a narcologist.