Seattle Times,WA
May 12 2006

“Absurdistan”: Players in the fields of oil
By Tim McNulty

Special to The Seattle Times

“Absurdistan”
by Gary Shteyngart
Random House, 333 pp., $24.95

Russian émigré Gary Shteyngart burst upon the literary scene in 2002
with his rollicking and bitingly satirical debut novel, “The Russian
Debutante’s Handbook.” Its hero, like its author, was born in
Communist Leningrad, raised in Reagan ’80s America and flounders
about wildly in the turgid cultural gulf between them.

Misha Vainberg, the self-absorbed hero of Shteyngart’s hilarious new
novel, “Absurdistan,” is also a misplaced Russian. His comic
misadventures on two continents bring post-Soviet Russia and
corporate America into the crosshairs of the author’s outlandish wit.
“Absurdistan” is a brilliant, fast-paced and idiosyncratic novel that
swerves frighteningly close to dead-on political reporting. It is
black humor at its darkest.

Vainberg (aka “Snack Daddy” for his vast appetites) is the 325-pound,
melancholic son of a Russian mobster and oligarch (the 1,238th
richest man in Russia). Misha was educated at “Accidental College” in
the American Midwest but finds his true home in a Wall Street loft in
slacker Manhattan with his voluptuous South Bronx girlfriend,
Rouenna.

There is no reason for Misha to return to St. Petersburg, with its
“bizarre peasant huts fashioned out of corrugated metal and plywood
colonizing the broad avenues.” But his “Beloved Papa” misses him, so
he goes. When Papa assassinates an Oklahoma businessman over a
percentage stake in a nutria farm, and then gets whacked himself (for
other, unrelated business dealings), Misha’s world constricts.

Author appearance

Gary Shteyngart will read from “Absurdistan” at 7 p.m. Thursday at
Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park (206-366-3333;
).
Denied a visa to re-enter the U.S., he is forced by circumstance to
travel to Absurdistan, a small, desperately poor but oil-rich fiefdom
wedged against the Caspian Sea. His singular mission there is to
purchase a phony European passport from a crooked Belgian consular
official (price: $240,000).

Life in Absurdistan takes an unfortunate turn for Misha shortly after
he checks in to his penthouse suite at the Hyatt. He finds himself
surrounded by Texas oilmen, Halliburton contractors and the busy
minions of Kellogg, Brown & Root. Svelte Absurdi hookers ply the
hallways, their faces “as powdered as an American doughnut.” The view
from his suite, however, is over rusted oil derricks and the brown,
alkaline shore that hems the capital city. A rock headland across the
bay is honeycombed with drab, concrete Soviet-era apartment complexes
that warehouse Absurdistan’s abundant poorer classes.

When civil war erupts between the ethnic Sevo and Svanï minorities (a
centuries-old religious dispute over the angle of Christ’s footrest
on the cross), Misha is trapped in the city. The inconvenience is
sufferable. He has a good supply of Atavan and the bar is kept
stocked with Johnnie Walker Black. American Express still rules,
after all. But when the governing elites hire Armenian mercenaries to
begin shelling the ethnic neighborhoods from the hotel roof, all hell
breaks loose.

Misha is embraced by a garrulous warlord with former KGB ties and
appointed minister of multicultural affairs. Misha’s innocence
throughout all this is rather charming. Oblivious to the political
treachery swirling around him, his only goal is to return to his
darling Rouenna in New York.

It may seem unlikely, but Shteyngart is able to create endearing
characters who draw the reader in despite their shabby pursuits. He
also paints a vivid and brutal picture of the kind of strife that
rakes Third-World oil countries, and he spares no reproach for the
American interests that bleed them, supply the weaponry and profit
from reconstruction.

In fact, there is something disturbingly familiar about Absurdistan.
Shteyngart’s wacky vision of a post-Cold War world sinking beneath
the weight of the American Century is not far from the mark.

Tim McNulty’s most recent book of poetry, “Through High Still Air,”
was published last fall. He lives on the Olympic Peninsula.