Rituel, violence et perversion : la drôle de cuisine de Vladimir Sorokine

Serving up Ritual, Violence, and Perversion : The Bizarre Cuisine of Vladimir Sorokin. The works of Vladimir Sorokin display an attention to detail in the description of food preparation and consumption that is unusual for russian literature. Perhaps even more unusual is the content of the cuisine served up and eaten by Sorokin’s characters. In this paper, I discuss images of cannibalism and sadism in Sorokin’s work. I shall argue that such imagery does not always reflect the liberating carnival atmosphere described by bakhtin, but, rather, that Sorokin’s works express the tensions inherit in deriving pleasure in the consumption of other living things and that they demonstrate the terror that can stem from giving free reign to our appetites.