Absurdistan

The Ledig House International Writers Residency in upstate New York has always been there for me when I needed a green place to write and think.

The best parts of this book, such as they are, were written under the care of Beatrice von Rezzori and the Santa Maddalena Foundation, her remarkable writers’ retreat near Donnini, Italy.

About the Author

GARY SHTEYNGART was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. It was also named a New York Times Notable Book, a best book of the year by The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly, and one of the best debuts of the year by The Guardian. His fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He lives in New York.

ALSO BY GARY SHTEYNGART

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Gary Shteyngart

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Portions of this work were originally published, in significantly different form, in The New Yorker.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shteyngart, Gary.

Absurdistan : a novel / Gary Shteyngart.

p. cm.

eISBN-13: 978-1-58836-530-9

eISBN-10: 1-58836-530-1

I. Title

PS3619.H79A63 2006

813'.6—dc22    2005054308

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