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Absurdistan: A Novel By Gary Shteyngart ( Random House Trade Paperbacks )
Release Date: 2007-04-03
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $13.95
Price: $11.16
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Product Description
“Absurdistan is not just a hilarious novel, but a record of a particular peak in the history of human folly. No one is more capable of dealing with the transition from the hell of socialism to the hell of capitalism in Eastern Europe than Shteyngart, the great-great grandson of one Nikolai Gogol and the funniest foreigner alive.”
–Aleksandar Hemon
From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook comes the uproarious and poignant story of one very fat man and one very small country
Meet Misha Vainberg, aka Snack Daddy, a 325-pound disaster of a human being, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, proud holder of a degree in multicultural studies from Accidental College, USA (don’t even ask), and patriot of no country save the great City of New York. Poor Misha just wants to live in the South Bronx with his hot Latina girlfriend, but after his gangster father murders an Oklahoma businessman in Russia, all hopes of a U.S. visa are lost.
Salvation lies in the tiny, oil-rich nation of Absurdistan, where a crooked consular officer will sell Misha a Belgian passport. But after a civil war breaks out between two competing ethnic groups and a local warlord installs hapless Misha as minister of multicultural affairs, our hero soon finds himself covered in oil, fighting for his life, falling in love, and trying to figure out if a normal life is still possible in the twenty-first century.
With the enormous success of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Gary Shteyngart established himself as a central figure in today’s literary world—“one of the most talented and entertaining writers of his generation,” according to The New York Observer. In Absurdistan, he delivers an even funnier and wiser literary performance. Misha Vainberg is a hero for the new century, a glimmer of humanity in a world of dashed hopes.
From the Hardcover edition.
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 Slow start, finishes with a bang. ( danfein )
No sophomore jinkx here. If anything, Shteyngart's second effort is better than the first. Written in a more aggressive, satirical style than TRDHB. At the beginning you wish he would have stuck with Vladamir Girshkin. At the end, you fall in love with Misha and want to know more.
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Another fascinating tale
Absurdistan. A perfect title for the content. Hilarious, introspective, and one of the most original writing styles I've ever read. His flair with the language, his descriptive adjectives in describing scenery and the people involved are often as astounding as they are funny. Storyline was a tad slow, but the writing more than covered for it.
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 Don't waste your time
Have you ever read a book with the expectation that it will eventually become good (especially when it's on the NYT top 10 list)? You know, the ones where you keep reading and reading, hoping that the next chapter will be the one that brings everything together and allows you to feel good about the time spent on what you considered a piece of literary trash. But then you finish the book, and you really don't even want to tell people that you've read it. Well, this was Absurdistan for me. I would have burned this, but it's on my Kindle, and now Amazon will keep it on my purchased list forever, reminding me of the hours wasted. My recommendation is to not waste yours.
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 Prophetic! ( mesander20002 )
Today (8/8/08) this book became prophetic. An unknown and unpronounceable town in Georgia (the one that used to be an SSR) is at war with the Russians. A port is being destroyed. It can't be real. Every word of the CNN summary sounds like it was written for "Absurdistan." Here are a few (begin quote):
"I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars," Lyudmila Ostayeva, a resident of the South Ossetia capital, Tskhinvali, told The Associated Press on Friday.
"It's impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged," she said after fleeing to a village near the Russian border, AP reported.
...
Hundreds of people, possibly thousands, are fleeing South Ossetia to the Russian region of North Ossetia-Alania, the United Nations reported Friday, citing Russian officials.
About 150 Russian armored vehicles have entered South Ossetia, Saakashvili said, and Georgian forces had shot down two Russian aircraft.
---End Quote
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Not a book to leave around for your teenage sons to read ( wamckee1 )
Shteyngart is a comic virtuoso, and his distance from eastern and western verities makes him uniquely capable of sending up both.
While impressive, the book falls short of his first novel-not least because of its dismisssive attitude toward women. If he was trying to emulate (or perhaps satirize?) the obsessive fascination with male sexual pleasure, he succeeded only in making long swaths of his novel nearly pornographic. The effect is titillating, but empty and distracting.
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Addiction
