"They don't shoot Belgians, do they" was quite a funny surprise line to find in this book. I liked the Slav melancholy, the description of turmoil in the Caucasus (and the references to Belgium, which has obviously been an inspiration to describe the state of Absurdistan, even though it seems positioned somewhere between Azerbaydjan and Armenia). Was less keen on the author's cynicism; here and there too glib for its own good. ( )

Absurdistan is freaking hilarious, from the descriptions of the corpulent, romantically minded main character to the satire of globalization and American multinational companies' influence in developing post-communist areas. ( )

Je n'ai vraiment pas apprécié ce livre. Personnage antipathique (je sais que ce n'est pas une critique recevable, mais chez moi ça compte), et je n'ai pas compris, apparemment, l'humour/ironie/cynisme de l'auteur. ( )

Too so cool, too cynical, too poorly constructed ( )

Throughout this book I found the title completely accurate in a completely ironic manner. Shteyngart both captures an era and an environment with this story, and although I'm not an oligarch's son, I found myself identifying with his characters in many of their situations. ( )

A novel about Russian Jews emigres - almost too frank, a bit too open...but good nevertheless. ( )

People like this overweight, entitled, adrift trustafarians do exist. interesting up close first person babble. the author can do better.h ( )

The main character's ignorance in this book is partly what makes it simultaneously funny and sad. The author's incredible ability to capture stereotypes and co-mingle elements of Eastern European and American modern culture - such as hip hop - painting a picture of a wealthy modern cross-national youth absorbed in consumer culture and plopping him into a destitute war torn society. The book is filled with cracks toward the author himself and pretty much every Eastern European, Jewish and American stereotype, and yet the main characters are all very sympathetic. You will grow to love Snack Daddy Misha. My only criticism of the book was that the humour was a bit redundant and by the end of the book I wasn't laughing so much anymore. ( )

This book is utterly gripping and rather weird. The story is absolutely magnetic, if sometimes a bit hard to follow. Characters range from the amusingly named Alyosha-Bob to the urban stripper-gone-good Rouenna to the main character, obese and almost Oedipal Snack Daddy Misha. If you have any familiarity with modern or Soviet-era Russian culture, this book will be even more amusing. ( )

You know those books that are so vague and literary and strange that they don't even use quotation marks or whatever? This is almost like those books except funny. And properly punctuated. About a hugely fat, young Russian guy who's trying to get back into the US and ends up stuck in some former Soviet bloc Caucasus country called Absurdistan. Seems very satirical, but in an even-I-get-it-and-find-it-amusing way. ( )

I went into this book under the impression that Gary Shteyngart was the actual grandson of Nikolai Gogol. This wouldn't necessarily mean that Shtyengart was any good, but I had some expectation of literary acumen. As it turns out, this was not true, and I can't figure out where I got the idea, which doesn't even really make sense chronologically. Best I can figure is that a blurb somewhere implied figuratively that Shteyngart was blood kin to Gogol,and I misunderstood it.

At any rate, it's good that it's not true, because if it were he would not be doing the family name much honor.

I have a theory as to how this book was written. Gary Shteyngart keeps a journal or list of all the jokes he comes up with so he'll remember them. He then picked all the jokes he wanted to use, and proceeded to write a novel around them.

That being the case, he did a fairly good job of concocting themes and a plot after the fact, but the novel still smacks strongly as one that is cobbled together around jokes Shteyngart liked a lot.

This novel should be put on the stove and boiled until reduced by half. There is good stuff in it, but it is buried among myriad unrelated debris, like so many slices of American hot dog hiding in a vat of macaroni and processed cheese. (If you liked that metaphor, and think you would enjoy 330 pages of similar material, you will like this book.)

I laughed out loud a few times in this book, but all before page 40. After that it was rather boring. And rather full of some of the most nauseating sex scenes I've ever encountered.

I'm sure there is great symbolism in Misha's butchered 'khui' and rolling expanses of fat, but Shteyngart didnt' make me care enough to try and figure it out. ( )

meh. I think I read this book at the wrong time. I get why people loved it, it just didn't work for me. It would help if I knew more about the current political situation in Russia - my knowledge is too sketchy to be useful. ( )

I bought this book by chance. It was a genuine impulse buy. I was on my way home from work and passed buy a bookstore in a train station. I came in and started bookshelf shopping. I passed by historical literature, pocket boks in Swedish and then stopped by “Best-sellers in English” self. The first place was occupied by “Absurdistan”.

The introduction said that the book was about an emigrant from Russia to the USA, who hated Russia. The word "Absurdistan" seemed vaguely familiar and somewhat funny. After all – the first place on a best-seller bookshelf! Well, I bought it, and did not regret a second.

Russian critics usually love to hate the book. It is easy to understand why. The book is full of words such as "St Leninsburg", and phrases like "Now it's no secret that St Petersburg is a backwater, lost in a shadow of our craven capital Moscow, which itself is but a third-world megapolis, teetering on the edge of some spectacular extinction". The main character desperately wants to get out from Russia, and that is what the whole book is about. And the last but not least reason for that strong aversion is the writer himself. He is a Jew, whose parents moved from Leningrad to the USA when he was 7 years old.

In fact, all the critics that point out the inaccuracy of author's description of ex-USSR society miss the point of the book completely. The focus of that book is not the ugliness of Russia or disgusting Russian girls at all. The focus of this book is a person who hates the place where he grew up and who wants to get out from it as soon as possible.

The book is full of caustic sarcasm and is full of hillarios jokes, which are especially great when you can speak Russian. Recommended, especially for people from ex-USSR countries. ( )

This book is fantastic. Shteyngart writes great dialogue--"To the khui with him!"--and Misha Vainberg is a great character. His fancy loafers, his replica of his therapist's office, his acceptance of the horrid violence all around him. He's like a criminally neurotic Forrest Gump, though much more interesting. The whole thing has a wonderful sort of deadpan Russia Meets West air about it. I was really interested in reading about how bizarre Russia has become since the Communist collapse, and though I know it's a hilarious exaggeration, there's something beguiling about extracts like this:

"Timofey trudged in, a weak, servile smile hoisted onto his grim physiognomy. 'I brought you a fresh bottle of Ativan from the American Clinic, batyushka,' he said, brandishing a large sack of medications. 'You know, Priborkhin's master was also in bed with depression, but then he took a little Zoloftushka and some Prozakchik, and off he went to run with the bulls in spain!"'

There is so much that is funny about those two lines that I believe Gary Shteyngart should write a sequel to this book. The addition of "Jerry Shteynfarb", predatory writing teacher at NY's Hunter College, seemed unnecessary to me...kind of Philip Rothy, and god knows he wore out the whole "I star in my own books" thing some time ago. ( )

It’s all about the humor and, whether it is terribly dark, burlesque, satiric or ironic, Gary succeeds in putting together a storytelling...

http://www.literaryagenda.com/gary-sh...

I actually freaked a lady out while on the train while reading this book. My stifled and convulsive laughter was apparently indecipherable from some sort of dangerous psychological malady. Absurdistan is, simply put, a 21st century Confederacy of Dunces set in a former Soviet satellite state; complete with a latter-day Ignatius P. Reilly in a Puma track suit. Very funny stuff. Personally, I could have used more atmospheric touches – the kind of whole world immersion that you normally find in sweeping emotional epics. The story moves along at a nimble clip, but it could have been about 100 pages longer. Plot and character are all well and good, but the richest literary experiences are often replete with time consuming diversions and flights of fancy. The descriptions of our protagonist eating and fornicating are positively hysterical. ( )

A novel of dazzling comic invention, spraying its satirical fire in many different directions - the moral and democratic vacuum in the New Russia, leaving it in thrall to tacky gangsters and prey to cheap Americanisms. The utter folly of the US attempts to export democracy to regimes 'in need of changing'. And the popular wave of corruption that follows this greenback route to democracy, with multiple parties jumping on multiple bandwagons - multiculturalism, free market trade, private finance, energy panic, holocaust studies. All undertaken by parties exploiting liberal blindess as to the whereabouts of the limits of tolerance.

At times, the book is little artificial, as characters pop up on springs and then are pressed back down again once they have had their comic effect. But the creations and conceits have a laugh out loud quality. Oleg the Moose and his syphilitic sidekicks; the war of the Sevo / Sveni footrest; or even the eye-poppingly risky chapter-length bid for an Museum / Institute for Holocaust Studies. And by intertwining the comic and the political so effectivly, the author manages to hit many of the festering political themes that fertilise satires such as this. ( )

A surreal satire of the fractured nations beholden to the oil interests of the United States, namely the chards of the U.S.S.R. in pre-9/11 times. The hero is a neurotic and obscenely overweight Russian Jew named Misha (a.k.a. Snack Daddy) heir to the 1238th largest fortune is Russia. Just like the Hip-Hop stars he idolizes, Misha embraces excess at every turn, spending money lavishly, drinking and having lots of sex.

The book's title refers to the fictitious nation of Absurdistan (read: Kazakhstan), an oil-rich home to Halliburton that falls apart when a civil war breaks out between its two ethnic groups, the Sevo and the Svanis (read: Tutsi and the Hutus). Things would have been fine had one group not shot the other's leader out of the sky while landing at the local airport (read: Rwanda circa 1994). In the chaos that follows, set in the summer of 2001, Misha becomes romantically attached to the daughter of the Sevo leader and is soon placed in a Ministry position. All he really wants is to return to the United States, who so cruelly exiled him two years earlier.

While Absurdian is at times funny, it mostly struck me as repetitive and trite. I suppose if I was well-read in Russian Lit (see heavy Russian Lit tagging in my profile), I would better appreciate the novel's many subtle jokes and references. Alas I'm just an ignorant American who barely got the endless Hip-Hop jokes. In the end, I was restless to get the self-indulgent, whiny hero out of my life. I choked down the last 50 pages like a bad side dish. Oh, and if you don't enjoy reading the particulars of sex with really fat people, then maybe this isn't the book for you either. ( )

Shteyngart leads his character through interesting states of mind but fails to really get the reader into it. Why did he choose to dot his book with digusting genital detailed descriptions (i hate the Russian word "khui")? is it meant to keep any normal reader away? If so, goal is achieved. Otherwise, it was totally and utterly unecessary. ( )

It took a little while to get swept up in this story - but once I did - it was interesting. Strangly true to life in many ways. There were times when I wondered if I was clever enough to muddle through, but I did and I'm glad I did. Perhaps it is because I am married to a Kazak-Russian-national that helped me to have a context for much of the story. ( )

A funny, bittersweet picaresque satire of contemporary Russia and Russian-Jewish ennui. Misha is a mixed-up sweetheart, lovable yet deeply dysfunctional. A good read, well-written. ( )

Non-starter. Shteyngart has his creative juices, good plot idea and character development going. However I couldn't continue because he inserted unnceccessary graphic deformation of genitalia repeatedly. Disgusting and in my mind ruined my ability to read and enjoy this book. ( )

I could not finish this book. The characters were repellent and their situations uninteresting. I cannot even imagine what the people who actually like this book see in it. If you wish to read an absurdist fantasy, you would be much better off reading John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces. At least that book was funny, where this book only points to itself and declares that it is funny, really. ( )

“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 Hemon

I liked Shteyngart's first novel (The Russian Debutante's Handbook) so was looking forward to reading this one. Unfortunately, this one was not as good as the first. It was kind of a one-joke wonder. ( )