The Russian Debutante's Handbook: A Novel [Paperback]

A visionary novel from the author ofSuper Sad True Love StoryandLittle Failure.

The Russian Debutante's Handbookintroduces Vladimir Girshkin, one of the most original and unlikely heroes of recent times. The twenty-five-year-old unhappy lover to a fat dungeon mistress, affectionately nicknamed Little Failure by his high-achieving mother, Vladimir toils his days away as a lowly clerk at the bureaucratic Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society. When a wealthy but psychotic old Russian war hero appears, Vladimir embarks on an adventure of unrelenting lunacy that takes us from New York's Lower East Side to the hip frontier wilderness of Prava--the Eastern European Paris of the nineties. With the help of a murderous but fun-loving Russian mafioso, Vladimir infiltrates the Prava expat community and launches a scheme as ridiculous as it is brilliant.

Bursting with wit, humor, and rare insight,The Russian Debutante's Handbookis both a highly imaginative romp and a serious exploration of what it means to be an immigrant in America."Rowdy, ribald, funny...this superb debut [is] the real thing."—Esquire

"As attuned to the exhilarating possibilities of the language as Martin Amis, as deadpan and funny as the young Evelyn Waugh."—Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times

"In Vladimir Girshkin, the wisecracking, lovelorn, desperately self-reinventing protagonist, Shteyngart has given us a literary symbol for this new immigrant age, much as Saul Bellow or Henry Roth did in theirs..."—Chris Lehmann,The Washington Post

"A brilliant, funny debut describing the vicissitudes of immigration today, as experienced by the hero, a young Russian-American."—Harper's Bazaar

"The rampaging narrative is festooned on every page with glittering one-liners, improbably apt similes, and other miniature pleasures."—Elle