Absurdistan

Nella prima parte è un po' noiosetto, ma credo sia voluto per meglio rappresentare la monotonia delle condizioni di vita iniziali del protagonista, poi si entra nel vivo e il ritmo si fa più incalzante.Interessante anche per l'ambientazione in una turbolenta località della ex unione sovietica.

Amusant, distrayantUn regard leger sur les reves , les desirs et les illusions d une nouvelle jeunesse russe confrontee aux demons du monde occidental et ses diktatsComme son premier livre , Traite de savoir vivre a l usage des jeunes russes, c est une ballade dans un autre univers parfois aux sentiers quelque peu ardus !

Déçu long

È un libro leggero, simpatico, che scorre facilmente. Sul genere di autori quali Pablo Tusset o John Kennedy Toole, ti isola dal mondo il tempo necessario di un sorriso e di una risata.

ABSURDISTAN is an entertaining novel - a witty and clever evisceration of the modern world-at-large, grubbily clawing its way out of the Cold War and scrambling for petro-dollars. It is funny and uncomfortable, a snapshot on the eve of Sept. 11 which leaves no stone unturned while looking for an overwrought subject to puncture; not American war-profiteering, not the Institution of the Holocaust, not even Gary Shteyngart himself. But as well as cynically rubbing our noses in the dirty secrets of globalism and multiculturalism, ABSURDISTAN also questions what a person of honesty, integrity and ability can do about it. It also questions what can be done by a man who has none of those things - nothing except the naïve belief that one person can make a difference.So we follow Misha Vainberg, 325 lb adolescent in a man's body, as he stumbles from one crisis to the next in his frustrated attempt to reach the holy grail of both America and his lost love, Rouenna, a girl he met and fell in love with during a brief stint as a student in New York. Stuck in his native Russia after being denied a return visa to the U.S, he travels to neighboring Absurdistan to buy a forged Belgium passport, hoping to eventually sidestep the INS. Unfortunately, this short detour turns indefinite when civil war breaks out - a civil war engineered to bring USAID dollars and to turn a tidy profit for civilian contractor Halliburton.Idealists may be offended by Mr. Shteyngart's cynicism, cynics may feel as though he's preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, his autopsy of the modern world is thorough, entertaining and disturbing. Like Heller before him, there's a feeling that he's placed his finger directly where the pulse used to be, but that, despite piling absurdity on absurdity, one feels he's only shown you the tip of the entire preposterous iceberg.So - entertaining, yes. Funny and clever and witty - and if one only reads novels to be entertained, then I highly recommend ABSURDISTAN. But somehow I feel as though it's all rather empty in the end. Vainberg's life seems empty. It isn't so much that he's tossed about from one storm to another - everyone suffers from that to some degree, just as we all suffer from a incomplete understanding of our surroundings and an inability to act in our own best interest at times. It's that there's nothing more to the world of Vainberg than Vainberg - which could very well be the author's point. It could be that the intention was to purposely create this self-absorbed character in order to point it out for us, yet it doesn't feel that way. Rather, I feel led to believe that Vainberg is the modern day hero, that his final thrust toward personal fulfillment is the only true quest that is open to humanity anymore. A Don Quixote to whom knight-errantry is a sucker's game and chivalry is less effective than pornography.Or maybe that isn't what the author is saying at all. Or perhaps it is, and he's right. Seems depressing to me to think so. If I have to read an absurdist, I'd just as well stick with one in the vein of Camus - one who can make the Sisyphean task in front of us seem ennobling rather than just another punch line in a long, clever joke.