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Abstract

Victor Pelevin belongs to the most popular and controversial contemporary Russian writers. He always leaves behind more questions than answers. Pelevin is recognized as one of the leading representatives of postmodernism in Russia. His novel Secret Views of Mount Fuji (2018) is the subject of the analysis in this paper. The plot of this novel is based on the story of three Russian oligarchs (unhappy oligarchs), who have experienced all the joys of life and begin to use a startup that offers different kinds of happiness. Pelevin pays special attention to a businessman named Fedya (Fyodor Semyonovich). The author makes a reference to the Buddhist concept of happiness and sets out in some detail the Buddhist theory of jhan – the successive stages of comprehending the highest truth. Pelevin says that everyone has their own happiness. One to achieve this state needs the truth, the other – its absence. The purpose of this article is: at first to show Pelevin’s point of view on the correlation between happiness and wealth, and secondly, to discuss Pelevin’s answers to the following questions: „what exactly is happiness?”, “is it true that money does not make us happy?”, “can we buy happiness with money?”.