Title:
- Absurdistan
Authors:
Genres:
Editions:
| # | Date | Publisher | Binding | Cover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2006-05-02 | Random House |  |
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- Blurb:
- 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. Open Absurdistan and meet outsize Misha Vainberg, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, lover of large portions of food and drink, lover and inept performer of rap music, and lover of a South Bronx Latina whom he longs to rejoin in New York, if only the American INS would grant him a visa. But it won"t, because Misha"s late Beloved Papa whacked an Oklahoma businessman of some prominence. And Misha is paying the price of exile from his adopted American homeland. He"s stuck in Russia, dreaming of his beloved Rouenna and the Oz of NYC. Salvation may lie 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. Populated by curvaceous brown-eyed beauties, circumcision-happy [crazed? zealous?] Hasidic Jews, a loyal manservant who never stops serving, andscheming oil execs from a certain American company whose name rhymes with Malliburton, Absurdistan is a strange, oddly true-to-life look at how we live now from a writer who should know. With the enormous success of The Russian Debutante"s Handbook, 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. And in Absurdistan, he gives an even funnier and wiser literary performance. In Misha Vainberg, he has invented a hero for the new century, a glimmer of humanity in a world of lost hope.