Absurdistan: A Novel (Paperback)

by Gary Shteyngart (Author)
Key Phrases: everything has its limits, big squishy hands, peaceful history, Alyosha Bob, New York, Accidental College (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Misha Vainberg, the rich, arrogant and very funny hero of Shteyngart's follow-up to The Russian Debutante's Handbook, compares himself early on to Prince Myshkin from Dostoyevski's The Idiot: "Like the prince, I am something of a holy fool... an innocent surrounded by schemers." Readers will more likely note his striking resemblance to John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius Reilly. A "sophisticate and a melancholic," Misha is an obese 30-year-old Russian heir to a post-Soviet fortune. After living in the Midwest and New York City for 12 years, he considers himself "an American impounded in a Russian body." But his father in St. Petersburg has killed an Oklahoma businessman and then turned up dead himself, and Misha, trying to leave Petersburg after the funeral, is denied a visa to the United States. The novel is written as his appeal, "a love letter and also a plea," to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to allow him to return to the States, which lovingly and hilariously follows Misha's attempt to secure a bogus Belgian passport in the tiny post-Soviet country of Absurdistan. Along the way, Shteyngart's graphic, slapstick satire portrays the American dream as experienced by hungry newborn democracies, and covers everything from crony capitalism to multiculturalism. It's also a love story. Misha is in love with New York City and with Rouenna Sales, his "giant multicultural swallow" from the South Bronx, despite the pain they have caused him: a botched bris performed on Misha at age 18 by New York City's Hasid-run Mitzvah Mobile, and Rouenna running off with his stateside rival (and Shteyngart's doppelganger), Jerry Shteynfarb (author of "The Russian Arriviste's Hand Job") while Misha is stuck in Russia. The ruling class of Absurdistan is in love with the corrupt American company Halliburton, which is helping the rulers in a civil war in order to defraud the U.S. government. Halliburton, in turn, is in love with Absurdistan for the money it plans to make rebuilding Absurdistan's "inferstructure" and for the plentiful hookers who spend their nights and days by hotel pools looking for "Golly Burton" employees to service. And everyone is in love with America—or at least its money. Everything in Shteyngart's frustrated world—characters, countries, landscapes—strives for U.S.-style culture and prosperity, a quest that gives shape to the melancholy and hysteria of Shteyngart's Russia. Extending allegorical tentacles back to the Cold War and forward to the War on Terror, Shteyngart piles on plots, characters and flashbacks without losing any of the novel's madcap momentum, and the novel builds to a frantic pitch before coming to a breathless halt on the day before 9/11. The result is a sendup of American values abroad and a complex, sympathetic protagonist worthy of comparison to America's enduring literary heroes. (On sale May 2)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post
When you land in Russia these days, you are likely to see this sign: "Rossiya strana vozmozhnosty" ("Russia is the land of opportunity"). And then, amid the expected shabbiness, you see Hummers and Rolls Royces. Russians exceed even Americans in their taste for size, status and ostentatious wealth. The situation lends itself to parody, and Gary Shteyngart's new novel, Absurdistan, does a marvelous job of satirizing the new Russian oligarchy, as well as the American lifestyle and the two countries' shared megalomania, consumerism and appetite for exploiting small countries.

The narrator, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, is Misha Vainberg, a 30-year-old "incorrigible fatso" with an unrestrained appetite for whiskey, women and sturgeon. He was sent to the United States "to become a normal prosperous American at Accidental College." But during a trip back to Russia, his Mafioso father is charged with having murdered an Oklahoma businessman and then assassinated himself. Under those circumstances, Misha can't obtain a visa to return to his beloved USA.

In desperation, he buys Belgian citizenship and a passport in Absurdistan, a new country being forged out of a staged war between the Sevo and Svani peoples in a small territory between Iran and Russia. The founding fathers of Absurdistan are gangsters working with a large American corporation called Golly Burton (say it out loud -- Russian mouths tend to turn h's into g's). Together they devise a scheme in which the U.S. government will pour billions of dollars into their country. The war is orchestrated from the top of the Hyatt hotel, where hired Ukrainian gunmen bomb sections of Gorbigrad in front of an international crew of TV journalists.

But the performance gets out of hand. "The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake," Misha notes, "a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared." There are 3,000 dead and hundreds of U.N. tents with tens of thousands of starving refugees, which makes Misha a little uncomfortable while dining at the expensive hotel. The whole situation is beautifully absurd, reminiscent of Catch-22, and offers a provocative critique of oil wars and war profiteering.

Despite Misha's education in multicultural studies, he spews out sardonic comments about anything ethnic. He doesn't spare Judaism, although he is Jewish. (Drunken Hassids in Brooklyn botched his circumcision badly when he came to the States as a college student.) While making love to his young stepmother, Misha lectures her on religion: "Whatever you may think of Judaism, Lyuba, in the end it's just a codified system of anxieties. . . . You should pay particular attention to the character of the Hebrew God and His utter contempt for all things democratic and multicultural."

Misha even derides America, despite his proclaimed love for it, and especially American colleges: "A surprising number of graduates," he notes, "went on to raise organic asparagus along the Oregonian coast." They "mostly have gay parties on rooftops where they reflect at length upon their quirky electronic childhoods and sometimes kiss each other on the lips and neck."

Shteyngart makes fun of everything, even himself. He appears as a minor character, Jerry Shteynfarb, a writer aspiring to become the Jewish Nabokov. He immigrated to the States at the age of 7 and made his fame by writing The Russian Arriviste's Hand Job. (Shteyngart emigrated at the age of 7 and in 2002 published a hugely successful novel called The Russian Debutante's Handbook, which made him a literary sensation.)

One risk of relentless irony and humor, though, is that we might lose the drama. Like many comic novels, this one is light on suspense. The ridiculed characters come off as caricatures. With his barrage of ridicule directed at others and himself, we can't worry much about Misha, his grotesque love affairs (rendered in full detail) or his quest for Belgian citizenship. Everybody is a crook of one stripe or another, and that induces a certain degree of predictability and monotony. Nearly everybody Misha meets in the new country offers the same formulaic greeting: "When you are in Absurdsvani, my mother will be your mother, my wife your sister, and you will always find water in my well to drink." Funny the first two times, not so much the 10th. Several other jokes are repeated, too, with diminishing returns.

However, the exuberance of Shteyngart's language keeps us engaged. Misha describes himself as "an American impounded in a Russian body." Energetic wit shines through every page. Seeing one of the women he's interested in, Misha says, "Gone was her usual Leather Lyuba motif; in its place, a blouse and skirt of dark contemporary denim fastened by an oversized red plastic belt with an enormous faux-Texan buckle. It was very Williamsburg, Brooklyn, circa right now."

The novel is grounded in a noble literary lineage. You can hear echoes of Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, with its glorification of size and appetites. Misha is a man of leisure on the order of Goncharov's Oblomov, who spends most of his time in bed. Although it's not written with as much compassion as A Confederacy of Dunces (justifiably so -- do we need to sympathize with the oligarchy?), Absurdistan exhibits a similar sense of humor mixed with sharp insights into the absurdity of the modern world.

Reviewed by Josip Novakovich
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812971671
• ISBN-13: 978-0812971675
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (110 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #36,285 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Panoramic and Idiosyncratic Black Comedy on Socialist Realism Makes for a Fun, Enlightening Read, May 4, 2006

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Absurdistan: A Novel (Hardcover)

The dark humor comes pouring out figuratively and literally in Gary Shteyngart's new novel skewering post-Soviet culture, American imperialism and the mixed blessings of capitalism in one fell swoop. The story's focal point is the grossly overweight Peter Pan-prototype Misha Vainberg, the son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia, who is desperate to return to the U.S. where he went to college, spent several years of penthouse life in New York City, fell for a trash-talking Bronx girl named Rouenna and engorged himself on the full spectrum of American cuisine. The comic and slightly surreal premise lends insight into what sudden exposure to democracy can do to a person's spirit and reason for living. Stuck in St. Petersburg (or as he likes to call it, St. Leninsburg), Misha has one dream - to attain a visa from the US consulate, but he fails to make headway with the governmental bureaucracy. His last remaining hope is going to Absurdistan, a former Soviet republic rich in oil, where he can get his hands on a Belgian passport that will allow him to get to the states.

Political instability, however, overtakes the tiny country and a most absurd civil war breaks out in a way that reminds me of Peter Sellers' first film about the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, "The Mouse That Roared". Mired in corruption where billions in petro-dollars are at stake, Misha is appointed the minister of multicultural affairs. Whether fighting for his life or discovering new love with the daughter of a local warlord, he finds he cannot escape his Russian past with ease. Shteyngart's unique gift is painting a panorama rich in cultural observations and personal chaos. The author also does not shy away from politically incorrect stereotypes because he shows them through Misha's jaundiced perspective of entitlement. Shteyngart challenges us to sympathize with an insensitive, often repellent glutton living in relative luxury, and he amazingly succeeds because Misha's journey toward self-awareness engulfs the reader in the absurdities faced by our reluctant hero. In what could be seen as the flip side of "Doctor Zhivago", the author illuminates the clashes between capitalism and socialism in highly inventive and shrewdly observant ways, showing us what a comedy of errors it has become to assimilate into a world so dominated by commercialism.

57 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From Here to Absurdity, May 11, 2006

By	Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Absurdistan: A Novel (Hardcover)

I approached Gary Shteyngart's second novel, "Absurdistan" with a mixture of anticipation and fear. I very much enjoyed Shteyngart's first novel, "The Russian Debutante's Handbook", and thought it held the promise of even better books to come. But second novels pose a challenge for both the author and the reader. The author must face the dreaded "sophomore slump" and live up to the heightened expectations for his next piece of work. The reader faces a similar challenge. It is one thing to pick up a book and be pleasantly surprised. It is quite another to pick up a book expecting it to be excellent. Shteyngart has passed this test with ease. "Absurdistan" is a page turning farce that kept me laughing throughout.

Absurdistan traces the life, loves and misadventures of one Misha Vainberg. Misha is the 1,238th-richest man in Russia. He is a man of immense proportions (Shteyngart has a number of amusing ways to describe how various parts of his body quiver) and appetites. When he eats his intake of food is enormous and the process of mass ingestion is treated by Misha with something akin to an orgiastic spiritual exercise.

Misha was raised in Leningrad, now known as St. Petersburg. His father was a minor-league Jewish dissident whose chief claim to fame was relieving himself on the dog of an officious Soviet bureaucrat. After the fall of the USSR, Papa rose to wealth and fame by becoming a successful criminal in the "new Russia". Educated in the U.S. at the prestigious liberal-arts Accidental College where he is known as "snack daddy" to his friends, Misha finds his way to New York where he falls in love with Rouenna, a sultry young lady from the South Bronx (think J-Lo but with a bigger trunk). Life falls apart for Misha after his father kills an American competitor. He finds himself stuck in St. Leninsburg (Misha's hilariously apt description of post-Soviet life) with no possibility of obtaining a visa to return to the U.S. In short order Misha's father is murdered. After receiving a multi-million dollar `settlement' from the mobster that killed his father, Misha schemes to return to New York. The plan calls for him to travel to the Republic of Absurdistan, a former Soviet state on the Caspian Sea, obtain a Belgian passport, move to Brussels and from there find his way back to the United States.

As one might expect, the best laid plans of mice and the son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia don't turn out for the best. Rouenna falls into the arm of another man, the unscrupulous Jerry Shteynfarb, an incurable lothario, Russian emigre and author of a well received book with a title very similar to The Russian Debutante's Handbook but which cannot be set out on a family site. The Absurdistanis are divided into two competing sects, the Sevos and Svanis and before too long the nation is embroiled in a civil war for reasons that will remind the reader (as a previous reviewer noted) of Peter Seller's movie The Mouse That Roared. I agree although I would add "as influenced by Heller's Catch-22".

Will Misha make it out of Absurdistan? Will he win Rouenna back or marry the beautiful daughter of one of Absurdistanis leaders? Those questions are answered in the book but the enjoyment is as much in the journey as in the conclusion. Shteyngart has a keen eye for the social and racial distinctions that run through life in the US and in the "new Russia". The dialogue is mordant, sharp, and almost invariably funny. The book is not without its flaws. Misha is not a very attractive character even when he elicits our sympathy. It is hard to get emotionally vested in a character imbued with the gargantuan tastes and appetite of Misha. That is clearly Shteyngart's intent and it serves a purpose in terms of the novel's underlying themes. However, the reader should be aware going in that the 'hero' of the book bears little resemblance to George Clooney. Some may find the descriptions of Misha's loves (eating and women) to be just a bit crude. I thought it worked, but readers should not expect to see refined descriptions of high cuisine and gentle love making. Last, although I thought using Gerry Shteynfarb as a sort of alter-ego nemesis for Misha was amusing, if a bit self-referential, the connection may not be made by those who haven't read The Russian Debutante's Handbook.

All in all, Absurdistan is funny, irreverent, and also in many ways a thoughtful reflection on how our relationship with our family (even if they aren't as wealthy as Misha's) influences our own life choices. Absurdistan was an excellent book and one that I do not hesitate to recommend.

L. Fleisig

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gary Shteyngart is a comic genius, February 14, 2006

By	Richard Cumming "richo" (blue state) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Absurdistan: A Novel (Hardcover)

Sometimes the 2nd novel is a let-down. ABSURDISTAN follows a debut, THE RUSSIAN DEBUTANTE'S HANDBOOK that is frankly, hard to top. Shteyngart has done it. ABSURDISTAN is the story of Misha Vainberg aka "Snack Daddy." The son of a Jewish Russian Gangster, "Snack" got an education at a ritzy private American college called Accidental, kind of a cross between Antioch and Oberlin. After his father assassinates a competitor, a guy from Oklahoma, "Snack Daddy" is unable to obtain a visa to return from Russia to his beloved New York. His girlfriend is back in New York and Misha finds out that she is being seduced by one of his former classmates, a Professor Shteynfarb. Misha is determined to find a way back to America. He heads to Absurdistan, an oil-rich former Soviet republic on the Caspian. From his perch in the penthouse of the Hyatt Snack Daddy watches the country dissolve into civil war. All he wants is a Belgian passport and his next meal. ABSURDISTAN is a comic farce and a tour de force. I laughed my way through it.