Daniel's review
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
Daniel's review
rating:
recommended for: people who like reality TV and schedenfreude.
status: Read in October, 2007 — I have a copy to sell/swap
rating:
recommended for: people who like reality TV and schedenfreude.
status: Read in October, 2007 — I have a copy to sell/swap
There's satire and then there's books in which everybody is horrible. "Absurdistan" is one of the latter, I think. It's about Misha, an emotionally crippled, morbidly obese Russian oligarch who wants only to move to New York to be with his girlfriend. He can't though, since his obese Russian oligarch father once killed an Oklahoma businessman and now the INS won't give Misha a visa. His quest for a US visa brings him from Russia to Absurdistan, the (made-up) pearl of the Caspian Sea, where he may be able to get Belgian citizenship for himself and by extension a travel permit.
Absurdistan as a country is just how you'd expect it to be, given its name: corrupt, politically ridiculous, split by war between two indistinguishable religious factions, and full of oil and Halliburton contractors. So yes, there is a satirical aspect to the book - in "Abusrdistan", all of the ways in which people are horrible to each other come directly from current events. Shteynga...more
Absurdistan as a country is just how you'd expect it to be, given its name: corrupt, politically ridiculous, split by war between two indistinguishable religious factions, and full of oil and Halliburton contractors. So yes, there is a satirical aspect to the book - in "Abusrdistan", all of the ways in which people are horrible to each other come directly from current events. Shteynga...more
