Gary Shteyngart

Russian American writer

Gary Shteyngart (/lang/'/ʃ//t//aɪ//n//ɡ//ɑr//t/; born July 5, 1972) is a Soviet born American writer. He is the author of five novels (including Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story) and a memoir. Much of his work is satirical.

Shteyngart's work has received numerous awards. The Russian Debutante's Handbook won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Book of the Month Club First Fiction Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. It was named a New York Times Notable Book and one of the best debuts of the year by The Guardian

In 2002, he was named one of the five best new writers by Shout NY Magazine. Absurdistan was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review and Time magazine, as well as a book of the year by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications. In June 2010, Shteyngart was named as one of The New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" luminary fiction writers. Super Sad True Love Story won the 2011 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature. His memoir Little Failure was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography).

Shteyngart's novels include The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), and Absurdistan (2006). Super Sad True Love Story (2010) was promoted by a film trailer with Paul Giamatti and James Franco. Thirty five years after he emigrated to the U. S., in January, 2014, Random House published Little Failure: A Memoir, and promoted it by a film trailer with James Franco and Rashida Jones. His 2018 book Lake Success was promoted by a film trailer with Ben Stiller. His fifth novel, Our Country Friends, was published by Random House in 2021. It is a story about friends who spend the pandemic together. His other writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, Granta, Travel and Leisure, which has inspired a Tumblr website devoted to his Collected Blurbs, a live reading, and a fifteen minute documentary narrated by Jonathan Ames.

Shteyngart is married to Esther Won, who is of Korean descent. They have a son, born October 2013. Shteyngart now lives in the Gramercy neighborhood of Manhattan. He spends six months out of the year at a house in northern Dutchess County, in the Hudson River Valley where he does nearly all of his writing.