Reviewers of Gary Shteyngart's 2002 debut novel The Russian Debutante's Handbook compared him with Bellow, Nabokov, Rushdie, Roth, Miller, Franzen, Richler, Martin Amis and Evelyn Waugh. Shteyngart's response was to build a self-deprecating subplot into his next offering, Absurdistan. About 50 pages in, we meet Professor Jerry Shteynfarb, a pompous immigrant intellectual, famous for writing The Russian Arriviste's Handjob, who spouts a lot of insincere rubbish and fancies himself as "the new Jewish Nabokov".
Shteynfarb's story, however, is tangential to that of the hero of Absurdistan, Misha Borisovitch Vainberg: "325 pounds at last count - and son of the 1,238th-richest man in all of Russia". Vainberg is a self-diagnosed "sophisticate and a melancholic" whose bedroom in St Petersburg is an exact replica of the office of Dr Levine, his Manhattan-based shrink. He is an Ignatius J Reilly for the global age: greedy, selfish, indignant, the consummate glutton.
After graduating from America's Accidental College, Misha was content to while away his twenties spending obscene amounts of money in New York. But after his father inconveniently murders an Oklahoman businessman, his entry visa to the US is revoked, leaving him trapped in Russia: "a nation of busybody peasants thrust into awkward modernity". Worse still, Vainberg senior is promptly murdered by the notorious Russian mafioso Oleg the Moose and his syphilitic cousin Zhora. Young Misha knows they are the culprits because the entire incident is filmed by Andri Schmidt, a 19-year-old tourist who happens to be cruising by in a canal barge, whacked out on synthetic MDMA. But given that Oleg and his cohorts have the whole criminal justice system tied up (much as Misha's father did before his untimely demise), there is nothing the bulky protagonist can do.
Lonely and directionless, with only his long-suffering manservant Timofey and his Russo-phile friend Aloysha-Bob for company, Misha yearns for his girlfriend Rouenna and the plastic comforts of "American" life. In desperation, he pursues a lead to Absurdistan, a small country bordering Iran, to buy a Belgian passport.
Absurdistan, he discovers, is populated by two major factions: the Sevo and the Svani, divided for centuries by a vague but violent disagreement over the direction of Jesus's foot on the cross. Believing the nation to be rich in oil, foreign players fan the flames of discord and civil war breaks out, leaving Misha once again trapped, this time with no internet and no functioning mobilnik to dial for assistance.
Before long, he is drafted into the escalating war. The Sevo's dubiously titled Committee for the Restoration of Order and Democracy tasks him with "Talking to Israel" to raise cash for the campaign. Misha is vaguely aware that getting involved with a Halliburton-backed coup (or "Golly Burton", as it is dubbed by the Absurdis) may be morally dubious, but reasons that perhaps "those coastal liberals didn't understand the cultural relativism involved in being from Texas". And so he sets about his task of courting the Israelis with ingenious proposals such as "Holocaust for Kidz".
Shteyngart's tale is full of beautifully ludicrous touches, such as Misha's propensity to slip into gangsta rap while lovemaking - which he gets to do an awful lot for someone so morbidly obese - and the songs sung by Absurdi prostitutes that glorify American military prowess with 1980s rock refrains: "I see a little silhouetto of a Serb/Golly Burt! Golly Burt! Will you do the fandango?"
As allegories go, this is not a very sophisticated one. Much as The Russian Debutante's Handbook used its anti-hero Vladimir Girshkin's journey to Americanisation to lampoon 1990s consumerism, so Absurdistan points out (indeed, hammers home) the devastating global consequences of naked greed. Alongside the ridiculous signs that the Absurdis wave at US aircraft in the vain hope that they will be rescued - "21 YR. OLD GIRL, NOT PROSTITUKA" . . . "MINE FAMILY HAS GAS" . . . "GO HOUSTON ROCKETS" - there is a plaintive message, in perfect English: "WE ARE NO WORSE THAN YOU ARE. WE ARE ONLY POORER." It is a farcical tragedy, but a tragedy none the less.
Yet for all the dazzling convolutions of Shteyngart's writing, and the grave points he makes about the world we live in, Aburdistan leaves you feeling a little cold. Perhaps that's the point. As comic caricatures, his characters fail to elicit sympathy - just as people dehumanised by impersonal news reports (or simply ignored by them) are sometimes very difficult to feel sorry for.
