This sticky situation degenerates into civil war as nasty as it is ludicrous. So Misha heads for Absurdistan, a chaotic Caucasian region populated by two warring ethnic groups plus plenty of visiting employees of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root: It seems there’s oil somewhere in them thar hills. His only way out is a trip to the Republic of Absurdistan, where the millions he negotiated as a settlement with Papa’s killer (another mobster) can buy him a Belgian passport and a ticket back to Western materialism. But now, in 2001, he can’t get an American visa-there’s that small matter of the Oklahoma businessman whom beloved papa iced. Misha would like to go back to the U.S., where he spent the 1990s happily attending college and sampling New York’s multicultural delights. Petersburg gangster who’s just been offed on the Palace Bridge. This time, Shteyngart’s not-so-heroic hero is 30-year-old, 325-pound Misha Vainberg, son of a St. Disappointing follow-up to The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2001) sends another Soviet-born Jewish protagonist to another global hot spot.
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