Word: absurdistan
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Dates: during 2006-2006
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...GARY SHTEYNGART, ABSURDISTAN...
...many novels feel tidy, as if the world were neatly divisible into East and West, good and bad. Absurdistan is not tidy, nor is its hero: grotesquely obese Misha Vainberg, a rich young Russian obsessed with New York City. Misha is trapped (for legal reasons) in his homeland, and his longing--plus vodka--powers this endlessly inventive, lugubriously funny post-Soviet picaresque...
...somewhat partisan sampling would also include Colson Whitehead (The Intuitionist), 36; Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory), 37; Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity), 36; Arthur Phillips (Prague), 37; Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep), 30; Myla Goldberg (Bee Season), 34; Nicole Krauss (The History of Love), 31; and Gary Shteyngart (Absurdistan), 33. If we open our borders to the Brits, we also get Zadie Smith (On Beauty), who at 30 is probably her generation's consensus No. 1 seed, as well as Monica Ali (Brick Lane), 39, and David Mitchell (Black Swan Green), 37. And there are dozens of young mid-list...
Thirty-year-old Misha Borisovich Vainberg, the hero of Absurdistan, is in every way and dimension an exaggerated character: grossly fat, filthy rich, loudly sentimental and operatically miserable as only a Russian can be. Vainberg lives in St. Petersburg, but his spiritual home is America, which he adores beyond all reason. Unfortunately, he's stuck in Russia because of trouble with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Pines Misha: "I am an American impounded in a Russian's body...
...attempts to inveigle himself into the U.S. via the fictional Caspian splinter state of Absurdistan, only to get tangled up with the cynical local oil politics and the local dictator's foxy daughter. All the while he bemoans his fate with Nabokovian wit and efficiency--when he alludes to the "typical drabness of the one-room Soviet apartment, with the bulbous refrigerator shuddering in the corner like an ICBM before launch," you can practically smell the spoiled milk...