Understanding Gary Shteyngart

"In this first book-length study devoted to the trailblazer of Russian-Jewish-American fiction, virtuoso performer on social media and prescient dystopianist Geoff Hamilton sheds light not only on Shteyngart's literary work, but also his mastery of such innovative genres as the self-deprecating book trailer and the tongue-in-cheek publicity blurb."—Adrian J. Wanner, Pennsylvania State University

"Witty and erudite study, channeling Gary Shteyngart's own brand of ironic sensibility."—Olga Gershenson, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"Understanding Gary Shteyngart is an engaging, comprehensive overview of his work, highlighting the uniqueness of a writer whose reliance on autobiographic detail has been both playful and perilous as it held up a mirror to liberal multiculturalism's blind spots. Hamilton skillfully captures the hilarious and phantasmagoric world of Shteyngart's protagonists who are neither comfortably Jewish, Russian, nor American, embroiled in satires of corporate globalization in a world after communism."—Natasa Kovacevic, Eastern Michigan University

"This deft and comprehensive study takes us deep into the ambivalent comic territory of Gary Shteyngart's novels and memoir and public appearances, and helps us to understand intimately why for this writer the quest for identity is almost always a quest for several other things at the same time."—Michael G. Wood, Princeton University