Set in a crumbling Black Sea resort, the novel follows the misadventures of two Russians, Arnold and Arthur, and the khakiclad Sam, a visiting American. These characters, it turns out, are depicted alternately as humans and as insects -- now they are humans with buggy qualities, now insects that walk and talk. As they forage, quarrel and joke in the squalid rooms of the resort -- and on the bodies of their hosts -- they encounter other members of Pelevin's satirical bestiary, and the resort itself comes to represent the decaying former Soviet Union.Few writers could pull off such a conceit; in Pelevin's hands, it is a sustained piece of artistry. The Life of Insects is a bitter parable of contemporary Russia, full of the probing, disenchanted comedy that makes Pelevin a vital and altogether surprising new writer.