Little Failure (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780679643753)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES - NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MORE THAN 45 PUBLICATIONS, INCLUDING
The New York Times Book Review - The Washington Post - NPR - The New Yorker - San Francisco Chronicle - The Economist - The Atlantic - Newsday - Salon - St. Louis Post-Dispatch - The Guardian - Esquire (UK) - GQ (UK)

After three acclaimed novels, Gary Shteyngart turns to memoir in a candid, witty, deeply poignant account of his life so far. Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own.

Born Igor Shteyngart in Leningrad during the twilight of the Soviet Union, the curious, diminutive, asthmatic boy grew up with a persistent sense of yearning--for food, for acceptance, for words--desires that would follow him into adulthood. At five, Igor wrote his first novel, Lenin and His Magical Goose, and his grandmother paid him a slice of cheese for every page.

In the late 1970s, world events changed Igor's life. Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev made a deal: exchange grain for the safe passage of Soviet Jews to America--a country Igor viewed as the enemy. Along the way, Igor became Gary so that he would suffer one or two fewer beatings from other kids. Coming to the United States from the Soviet Union was equivalent to stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of pure Technicolor.

Shteyngart's loving but mismatched parents dreamed that he would become a lawyer or at least a "conscientious toiler" on Wall Street, something their distracted son was simply not cut out to do. Fusing English and Russian, his mother created the term Failurchka--Little Failure--which she applied to her son. With love. Mostly.

As a result, Shteyngart operated on a theory that he would fail at everything he tried. At being a writer, at being a boyfriend, and, most important, at being a worthwhile human being.

Swinging between a Soviet home life and American aspirations, Shteyngart found himself living in two contradictory worlds, all the while wishing that he could find a real home in one. And somebody to love him. And somebody to lend him sixty-nine cents for a McDonald's hamburger.

Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart's prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world.

Praise for Little Failure

"Hilarious and moving . . . The army of readers who love Gary Shteyngart is about to get bigger."--The New York Times Book Review

"A memoir for the ages . . . brilliant and unflinching."--Mary Karr

"Dazzling . . . a rich, nuanced memoir . . . It's an immigrant story, a coming-of-age story, a becoming-a-writer story, and a becoming-a-mensch story, and in all these ways it is, unambivalently, a success."--Meg Wolitzer, NPR

"Literary gold . . . bruisingly funny."--Vogue

"A giant success."--Entertainment Weekly

Author: Gary Shteyngart
ISBN-10: 0679643753
ISBN-13: 9780679643753
Publisher: Random House
Language: English
Published: 01/07/2014
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.44lbs
Size: 9.44h x 6.55w x 1.16d
Award: National Jewish Book Award - Finalist
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 08/01/2013 pg. 58
Publishers Weekly 10/28/2013
Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2013
Library Journal 12/01/2013 pg. 101
New York Times Book Review 01/05/2014 pg. 9
Entertainment Weekly 01/10/2014 pg. 72
Shelf Awareness 01/07/2014
New York Times Book Review 01/12/2014 pg. 22
Entertainment Weekly 01/31/2014 pg. 107
People Weekly 02/03/2014 pg. 56
New York Review of Books 02/20/2014 pg. 4
New York Times Book Review 02/09/2014 pg. 16
Entertainment Weekly 03/21/2014 pg. 67
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/03/2014 pg. 38
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/07/2014 pg. 28
Kirkus Best Nonfiction 12/01/2014 pg. 43
BookPage 01/01/2014
Asimov's Science Fiction 04/01/2015 pg. 183
Library Journal 08/01/2013