Gary Shteyngart Chronicles Life in 'Absurdistan' Gary Shteyngart came to the United States in 1979 as a 7 year old Soviet-Jewish kid. He left behind a life of childhood bliss to become a self-described depressive nerd. He's all grown up now, and his new novel, Absurdistan, imagines an oil-rich country run by kleptocrats and oil giants.

Gary Shteyngart Chronicles Life in 'Absurdistan'

Gary Shteyngart Chronicles Life in 'Absurdistan'

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/5394015/5397091" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Russian-American author Gary Shteyngart's latest novel is Absurdistan. Marion Ettlinger hide caption

toggle caption
Marion Ettlinger

More from Shteyngart

A joke about Leonid Brezhnev

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/5394015/5394489" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Gary Shteyngart came to the United States in 1979 as a 7-year-old Soviet-Jewish kid. He says he left behind a life of childhood bliss for the lot of a depressive, self-described nerd in New York City.

Shteyngart has grown up to be a humorist and novelist who writes about people and places that are real and imaginary. He also writes about that curious category in between: people and places in the former Soviet Union.

His new novel is about a country called Absurdistan. The country might remind readers of certain countries in the Caucasus, like Azerbaijan or Georgia, says Shteyngart. His Absurdistan is oil-rich and run by an elite kleptocracy and a group of companies, including Halliburton.

"It's almost nonfiction," says Shteyngart.

Absurdistan
By Gary Shteyngart

Buy Featured Book

Title
Absurdistan
By
Gary Shteyngart

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?