Gary Shteyngart Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002)
Absurdistan (2006)
Super Sad True Love Story (2010)
Lake Success (2018)
Our Country Friends (2021)

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Gary Shteyngart Books Overview

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

Playaway is the easiest way to listen to a book on the go. An all in one format, the player and content are combined in one 2 ounce unit and it comes with everything you need to start listening immediately. No separate player needed, no CDs, no downloads just press play! The Russian Debutante’s Handbook takes us from New York City’s Lower East Side to the hip frontier wilderness of Prava the Eastern European Paris of the ’90s whose grand and glorious beauty is marred only by the shadow of the looming statue of Stalin’s foot. There, with the encouragement of the Groundhog, a murderous but fun loving Russian Mafioso, Vladimir infiltrates the American ex pat community with the hope of defrauding his young middle class compatriots by launching a pyramid scheme that’s as stupid as it is brilliant. Things go swimmingly at first, but nothing is quite as it seems in Prava, and Vladimir learns that in order to reinvent himself, he must first discover who he really is.

Absurdistan

Absurdistan is not just a hilarious novel, but a record of a particular peak in the history of human folly. No one is more capable of dealing with the transition from the hell of socialism to the hell of capitalism in Eastern Europe than Shteyngart, the great great grandson of one Nikolai Gogol and the funniest foreigner alive. Aleksandar HemonFrom 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 countryMeet Misha Vainberg, aka Snack Daddy, a 325 pound disaster of a human being, son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia, proud holder of a degree in multicultural studies from Accidental College, USA don t even ask, and patriot of no country save the great City of New York. Poor Misha just wants to live in the South Bronx with his hot Latina girlfriend, but after his gangster father murders an Oklahoma businessman in Russia, all hopes of a U.S. visa are lost. Salvation lies 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. With the enormous success of The Russian Debutante s Handbook, Gary 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. In Absurdistan, he delivers an even funnier and wiser literary performance. Misha Vainberg is a hero for the new century, a glimmer of humanity in a world of dashed hopes. From the Hardcover edition.

Super Sad True Love Story

The author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart has risen to the top of the fiction world. Now, in his hilarious and heartfelt new novel, he envisions a deliciously dark tale of America s dysfunctional coming years and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink. In a very near future oh, let s say next Tuesday a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don t that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty nine year old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world s last diary, and less proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn t it? Lenny s from a different century he totally loves books or printed, bound media artifacts, as they re now known, even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty four year old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness. After meeting Lenny on an extended Roman holiday, blistering Eunice puts that Assertiveness minor to work, teaching our ancient dork effective new ways to brush his teeth and making him buy a cottony nonflammable wardrobe. But America proves less flame resistant than Lenny s new threads. The country is crushed by a credit crisis, riots break out in New York s Central Park, the city s streets are lined with National Guard tanks on every corner, the dollar is so over, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Undeterred, Lenny vows to love both Eunice and his homeland. He s going to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, in a world where single people can determine a dating prospect s hotness and sustainability with the click of a button, in a society where the privileged may live forever but the unfortunate will die all too soon, there is still value in being a real human being. Wildly funny, rich, and humane, Super Sad True Love Story is a knockout novel by a young master, a book in which falling in love just may redeem a planet falling apart.