Absurdistan

Misha Vainberg, nicknamed Snack Daddy, is a heavyset young man who weighs in at 325 pounds. He is the son of one of Russia's wealthiest men, ranked 1,238th in the country, and holds a multicultural studies degree from a college in the United States that he prefers not to discuss. He considers himself a citizen of New York City above all else. Misha's dream is simple: to settle in the South Bronx with his girlfriend. When his gangster father kills an Oklahoma businessman in Russia, that dream collapses, since the crime puts any American visa out of reach.

A corrupt consular official in Absurdistan, a small oil-rich country, offers Misha a Belgian passport, and he heads there hoping to find a way out. Civil war erupts between two rival ethnic groups, and a local warlord appoints the unprepared Misha as minister of multicultural affairs. Suddenly he is coated in oil, struggling to survive, falling in love, and asking whether an ordinary life can still exist in the twenty-first century.

Absurdistan follows Gary Shteyngart's earlier novel The Russian Debutante's Handbook, and it continues his satirical look at the upheaval of post-Soviet Eastern Europe and the pull of Western capitalism. The novel is aimed at adult readers who enjoy sharp, comic fiction about globalization, identity and wealth.