Smak życia — smak śmierci. Uczta Władimira Sorokina

The Feast (Пир, 2001) by Vladimir Sorokin is considered to be the culmination of the second period of the author’s literary work, and the one that presages his break up with the fundamental principles of postmodernism and conceptualism. The Feast consists of thirteen novels, all of which more or less literally revolve around the theme of eating. Sorokin’s search for the taste of life based on the opposition body/flesh–the disincarnate, culture–pseudoculture, manifests his critique of the superficiality of modern societies, in which the collective pursuit of sensuality together with widespread accessibility of all sorts of material goods are signs of inner self-destruction. Sorokin’s “taste of death,” expressed principally in the display of various forms of cannibalism, prefigures the advent of afuture “taste of life” — free from taboo, illusion and prejudice.