Absurdistan

BGB’s Dr J forwarded the NYT’s review of Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart. It may need to bump up a few places on my “to read” list. Here’s critic Walter Kirn gushing over the book:

Why praise it first? Just quote from it — at random. Just unbutton its shirt and let it bare its chest. Like a victorious wrestler, this novel is so immodestly vigorous, so burstingly sure of its barbaric excellence, that simply by breathing, sweating and standing upright it exalts itself … Compared with most young novelists his age, who tend toward cutesy involution, Shteyngart is a giant mounted on horseback. He ranges more widely, sees more sweepingly and gets where he’s going with far more aplomb.

I’m not sure where Mr. Kirn stands on this book. There is also a link to an interview and reading by the author (click on the picture where Shteyngart looks like Vlad the Impaler)- if you want to go all multi-media and whatnot.