Failure Is an Option: Immigration, Memory, and the Russian Jewish Experience with Gary Shteyngart

If you enjoy clever page-turners and you have never read Gary Shteyngart’s first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, an unbelievably funny specimen of the immigrant novel, get yourself to a bookstore ASAP. He has since published several other hilarious, globe-spanning novels and one hilarious, globe-spanning memoir, Little Failure. He was born in Russia and lived there as a young child, so he ought to have fascinating things to say about our new overlords and about the role satire plays in authoritarian societies.