Abstract: The article analyzes the image of a werewolf fox, formed in the Far Eastern mythological tradition and Russified in the stories of Russian authors Yuri Mamleev, Marta Ketro and Dmitry Vodennikov. The motive of werewolf among these writers has an indefinite character: on the one hand, werewolf can be understood literally by them, on the other ‒ as a metaphor (for example, feminine nature or poetic otherness). The werewolf foxes in the stories "The Teacher", "The Fox Wife", "The Confession of the Chinese Werewolf Fox" are placed by the authors in the Russian cultural and everyday context of the 1980s and the 1990s of the XXI century and are embedded in the space of a changing but unrelenting Russian spiritual search. In these works, they act as spiritual seekers and mentors in contact with two worlds, striving for a transcendent reality and revealing it to people.
The presented article was written as part of a large study on the "Chinese text" of modern Russian literature. In addition to these works, it mentions some domestic novels, which also feature a werewolf fox.
The relevance of the article is determined by the active interest of Russian literary criticism in borderline, intercultural phenomena that give rise to new artistic meanings. One of these phenomena is the Far Eastern werewolf fox, whose image variants have appeared in recent years among a large number of Russian writers. The relevance of the article also lies in the constantly expanding links between Russian and Chinese cultures. The novelty of the article is determined by the comparison made for the first time between the mentioned texts in the aspect of different and at the same time similar development and understanding by writers of different generations and different aesthetic attitudes of the image of the werewolf fox.

Abstract: The article analyzes the image of the Chinese werewolf fox, or Huli jing (Chinese: 狐狸精), in Victor Pelevin's novel «The Sacred Book of the Werewolf». The comparison of the main character of Pelevin's work with the images of Huli jing in classical Chinese texts is made. In the center of consideration is the nomination of the heroine, her appearance, habitat, the ability to turn around and impose a hassle, the nature of sexuality, lifestyle. It is established that the image of the werewolf fox in Pelevin is a synthetic image created on the basis of mainly two cultures – Chinese and Russian. At the same time, she was influenced by mystical, religious, cultural and literary Chinese traditions. The writer relies on the components of the image of the Huli jing, borrowed from Chinese books, but offers an expanded and reinterpreted version of them. Pelevin is primarily interested in the desire of the werewolf fox not for bodily, but for spiritual transformation, on the way to which his heroine, relying on eastern philosophy, studies the principles of her mind. The Huli jing of the «Sacred Book of the Werewolf» and the confusion that it induces act as a metaphor for reality as a whole (man, time, space, language, the outside world, etc.). The nature of reality, according to Pelevin's novel, is transformational at its core, and this feature of it is due to its illusory nature. The relevance of the article is determined by the high interest of domestic and foreign literary criticism in the work of Viktor Pelevin and comparative studies (in this case, affecting Russian and Chinese cultures). The novelty of the work is due to the expansion of the concept of werewolf in Pelevin's novel – from the bodily inversivity of the main character to the characteristics of various aspects of reality.