Customer Rating:  
Summary: A book for fatties
Comment: I thoroughly enjoyed the exploits and thoughts of a true slovenly obese anti-hero. As he made his way from post-communist Russia to a fantasy country, his encounters with bureaucracies and over-inflated characters were often hilarious. My belly laughs were of the size of his stomach. Absurdistan is a book to set aside reality and just let yourself ripple with laughter and even an occasional "ah ha."
Ron Lealos author of Don't Mean Nuthin'
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow start, finishes with a bang.
Comment: No sophomore jinkx here. If anything, Shteyngart's second effort is better than the first. Written in a more aggressive, satirical style than TRDHB. At the beginning you wish he would have stuck with Vladamir Girshkin. At the end, you fall in love with Misha and want to know more.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Another fascinating tale
Comment: Absurdistan. A perfect title for the content. Hilarious, introspective, and one of the most original writing styles I've ever read. His flair with the language, his descriptive adjectives in describing scenery and the people involved are often as astounding as they are funny. Storyline was a tad slow, but the writing more than covered for it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Comment: Have you ever read a book with the expectation that it will eventually become good (especially when it's on the NYT top 10 list)? You know, the ones where you keep reading and reading, hoping that the next chapter will be the one that brings everything together and allows you to feel good about the time spent on what you considered a piece of literary trash. But then you finish the book, and you really don't even want to tell people that you've read it. Well, this was Absurdistan for me. I would have burned this, but it's on my Kindle, and now Amazon will keep it on my purchased list forever, reminding me of the hours wasted. My recommendation is to not waste yours.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Prophetic!
Comment: Today (8/8/08) this book became prophetic. An unknown and unpronounceable town in Georgia (the one that used to be an SSR) is at war with the Russians. A port is being destroyed. It can't be real. Every word of the CNN summary sounds like it was written for "Absurdistan." Here are a few (begin quote):
"I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars," Lyudmila Ostayeva, a resident of the South Ossetia capital, Tskhinvali, told The Associated Press on Friday.
"It's impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged," she said after fleeing to a village near the Russian border, AP reported.
...
Hundreds of people, possibly thousands, are fleeing South Ossetia to the Russian region of North Ossetia-Alania, the United Nations reported Friday, citing Russian officials.
About 150 Russian armored vehicles have entered South Ossetia, Saakashvili said, and Georgian forces had shot down two Russian aircraft.
---End Quote
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