National insecurity

It seemed like a brilliant idea to entice Gary Shteyngart, the author of the widely acclaimed The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and a noted bon vivant, to give an interview by promising him mini-hamburgers at an Irish bar in lower Manhattan. His new novel, Absurdistan, packed with tenderly described exotic delicacies such as sturgeon kebab, is hunger inducing. It was impossible to believe that the creator of Misha Vainberg, the book’s hugely insatiable protagonist, wouldn’t be as voracious as his character. Shteyngart demurely stopped after only two burgers, but ranted, drank and opined with the same greedy energy that fuels his writing.

Shteyngart’s hero, a Russian living in New York’s Financial District, is gluttony incarnate, consuming the world around him with compulsive adoration. “He just loves too much,” the author explains. Among other things, Misha loves food (he tips the scales at 325 pounds), sex, Public Enemy, the World Trade Center, psychoanalysis and his father. “You will see me attempt to save an entire race from genocide,” he promises by way of introduction. “You will see me become a benefactor to St. Petersburg’s miserable children; and you will watch me make love to fallen women with the childlike passion of the pure.”

His hostilities are likewise born of extravagant passion: He loves humanity and thus loathes corruption and racism, loves to distraction an ex--stripper from the Bronx named Rouenna, and despises his rival for her affections (the wily poseur Jerry Shteynfarb, author of The Russian Arriviste’s Hand Job). Only Hasidim, at whose hands he suffered a botched back-alley adult circumcision, earn his outright, unnuanced ani-mosity.

The plot, as one might glean from the title (-Shteyngart cites it as an example of his “penchant for low humor”), is wacky, heartfelt and luxuri-ously imaginative. Despite being partially set in a fake country, Absurdistan also takes bitter aim at real life. This is a novel about buffoonish dic-tators, socialized corruption and corporate imperialism (with none less than Halliburton, flanked by American Express, leading the brigade). “Sometimes fiction is better equipped to keep up with reality,” says Shteyngart. “After all, in a novel you’re telling, or creating, truth, not report-ing what you heard.” (Aston-ish-ingly, Halliburton’s lawyers—who were consulted by Shteyngart’s publisher, Random House—took no issue with the book.)

Misha’s most ardent desire is to settle down in Williamsburg with his beloved Rouenna. The only problem is his father. Boris Vainberg is the 1,238th-richest man in Russia—a self-made post-Soviet criminal who charmed his way from St. Petersburg to Halliburton to remote mountain villages, with a deadly combination of cunning, profligacy and Jewish activism. Just as Misha is about to realize his American dream, Boris murders a businessman from Oklahoma and soon winds up dead himself in St. Petersburg. When Misha goes to the funeral, his U.S. guest visa is permanently retracted, stranding him in Russia.

Opportunity presents itself in the form of Absurdistan, a tiny, corrupt and unstable repub-lic on the Caspian Sea. (Note: You won’t find this country on the map. It is based loosely on Azerbaijan and Georgia, where Shteyngart’s family used to summer—“places that grow more absurd by the moment,” the author says.) Here, Misha would be  able to purchase Belgian citizenship through an alcoholic friend of a friend who’s a cop. Misha has to hurl his Goliath frame through flaming hoops before he discovers one of the many morals of this story: You can’t buy happiness.

Absurdistan erupts in violence practically upon Misha’s arrival. Homes are bombed, lower-class inno-cents die, and fake oil refineries are set ablaze, as criminals of all stripes (but mostly money-grubbing progressives in casual shirt-sleeves) vie for power. The situation devolves further, the capital goes up in flames, employees of Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root are airlifted out. The date is September 11, 2001, and the rest of the world couldn’t care less about the fall of Absurdistan.

It’s an object lesson, says Shteyngart, who returned from a hair-raising research trip in Abkhazia, Georgia, a permanent war zone, days before 9/11. A Russian immigrant himself (-albeit a successful one), he’s straddled cultures his whole life and is accustomed to the idea that unadul-ter-ated human tragedy gets relativistic treatment on the inter-national stage. 

At one point, Misha tries to flee the country on a private luxury train, and then by foot. Shteyngart assures us that Misha’s chances of ever getting back into post–-Homeland Security America are slim. “Freedom is anathema to dreams built in captivity,” the author says. Misha’s capa-city for hope is inspiring, and his voracious appetite for life and happiness genuinely awesome, but as a fat Russian living off a dirty legacy, his sad fate is written in stone.

Absurdistan (Random House, $24.95) is out now. Shteyngart reads Sunday 7 (see Books listings).