Absurdistan

ABSURDISTAN

by Gary Shteyngart

 

Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2008, NY Times Finalist 2006

 

Date Read: January 1, 2023

 

Within the first five pages of Absuridstan, I realized this was a cross between A Confederacy Of Dunces meets A Russian Debutantes Handbook. Only after this thought did I realize that Russian Debutantes and Absurdistan were both written by Shteyngart (derp!). I’m not sure what compelled him to recreate his first novel again but from a different point of view. I felt like he was a dog with a bone he just can’t let go of.

 

Misha “Snack Daddy” Vainsberg is the anti-hero here, a morbidly obese man who has been coddled all his life and bumbles from one absurd (see what I did there?) situation to the next. He intends to do good, only if it doesn’t cause him too much trouble or inconvenience. Yet, he brags about these barely thought out good intentions as if he had already done them, circumnavigating the need to do anything at all.

 

While Misha would prefer to be in New York, with his love Rouenna, he is trapped in Russia and subsequently Absurdistan because he can’t get a U.S. passport. Misha’s father killed an Oklahoman and the U.S. State Department has forbidden Misha to enter the country. After Misha’s father dies, he is able to bribe his way to a Belgian passport, which he is hoping to ultimately leverage to gain entry to the U.S.

 

On his way to Belgium, he is waylaid in Absurdistan due to a sudden (not really) civil war that everyone in Misha’s orbit has skin in the game. The ultimate goal is to ransack the remainder of this oil producing country, having been wrung dry of its oil and now of its ability to provide a blank check to Halliburton. Misha arrives at an opportune time, talking about the optics of the war and marketing sympathy to their cause.

 

Shteyngart’s ability to concoct the most conspiratorial explanations for political upheaval are as plausible as they are absurd. He has a gift with fictional establishment machinations with a clear ability to describe the grotesque. I am still dumbfounded, however, as to why he would want to write the same novel twice. 

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