Absurdistan

As I work my way through the ten books chosen by The New York Times as the best of 2006, I come to the first novel on the list, Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart. This is the opera buffa story of Misha Vainberg, the obese son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia, who is as memorable a character as you are likely to come across in a work of recent fiction.

Misha is 350-pound dilettante, the son of a man with slippery business ethics but also a dissident Jew, whom Misha refers to as "Beloved Papa." Misha was sent away to the United States for college, and he learned to love the excesses of capitalism, particularly rap music and a foul-mouthed Latina from the Bronx. Upon returning to Russia to be with his father, though, he finds himself unable to return to the U.S.A., because his father has murdered a businessman from Oklahoma.

This book then becomes a diary of Misha's quest to get back to the adopted country he loves and the woman he longs for. He learns that he can acquire a Belgian passport by traveling to the former Soviet republic of Absurdistan, which he does with alacrity. Absurdistan, of course, is fictional, occupying the same space, as near as I can tell, with the real nation of Azerbaijan (south of Russia, on the Caspian, and bordering Iran). As the name implies, Absurdistan is the kind of country that Joseph Heller would have loved (in fact, Shteyngart gives Heller a shout out during the book). It has two factions that are forever at odds: the Sevo and the Svani. They are both Christians, but disagree on the angle of tilt of Christ's footrest on the cross. This is pointless dispute reminiscent of both Swift and Dr. Seuss.

Misha, who is only interested in food and rap music, suddenly finds himself in the midst of a Civil War. He has aligned with the Sevos, for he has fallen in love with a buxom tour guide who is the daughter of the Sevo leader (his Bronx angel has thrown him over for a Russian émigré professor, who is given the tongue-in-cheek name of Jerry Shteynfarb, and is modeled after the author himself). The country, while fictional, is entwined with the very real Halliburton company and its subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, who hunger for the supposed oil reserves the country has. Misha manages to have himself named Commissar of Multicultural Affairs, and begins drafting documents for a Holocaust Museum when the war escalates and his life in danger.

This book, while comic in tone, is occasionally very serious, depicting how poor, small countries that are the puppets of big corporations can be devastated. Just like the characters of Heller's Catch-22, which is also a comic novel that doesn't shy away from the horrors of war, Misha can't escape the reality of his situation. But the writing is inspired, and frequently of genius level. There is a zinger on almost every page, and I can just let the book fall open and find a gem: "During the thirties and forties, Stalin had killed half my family. Arguably the wrong half." Or: "In my golden, glassed-in elevator, I fell like Icarus from my lofty penthouse to the busy hotel lobby, where the local merchants promptly sold me a Gillette Mach3 razor, a bottle of Turkish Efes beer, and a box of Korean condoms." Or: "Lefevre, upon seeing my bulk spilling over the tiny Soviet bed so that each leg and arm hung suspended like a ham at a Castilian tapas bar, started laughing with ever atom of his marinated red face. But the joke was on him several days later, when he committed suicide in our bathroom." I could go on and on.

The book also has a soft, old-fashioned sentiment of redemption and love conquering all, despite Halliburton's best efforts. Misha Vainberg is a character who ranks up Candide, Don Quixote, or Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces.