

Sinossi
«Una gemma letteraria.»
Vogue
«Straordinaria capacità di miscelare autoironia e introspezione.» - Michiko Kakutani, critico letterario del New York Times
«Il libro più bello che abbia scritto.»
Zadie Smith
Nato Igor Shteyngart a Leningrado, è un bambino pieno di curiosità. A cinque anni scrive il suo primo racconto: Lenin e la sua oca magica e la nonna gli paga una fetta di formaggio per ogni pagina.
Alla fine degli anni '70 la Storia cambia il corso della vita di Igor. Jimmy Carter e Leonid Brežnev stringono un patto: fornitura di grano in cambio del passaggio degli ebrei sovietici negli Stati Uniti. Un paese che Igor ha imparato a odiare come Il Nemico.
In questo passaggio Igor diventa Gary e l'ingresso negli Stati Uniti è come smettere di osservare il mondo da una rupe monocromatica e tuffarsi in una piscina con riflessi d'acqua in technicolor.
I genitori amorevoli e un po' bislacchi di Gary sognavano che lui diventasse un famoso avvocato, o un coscienzioso "squalo" di Wall Street. Purtroppo però il ragazzo ha scelto la carriera di scrittore. A sua madre non resta che coniare un soprannome a metà tra il russo e l'inglese - "Failurchka", Piccolo Fallimento - da appioppare al figlio. Amorevolmente. Più o meno.
Questo libro prezioso è l'ultima fatica di Gary Shteyngart. Candido, ironico e profondo, è il racconto autobiografico di uno dei più brillanti scrittori americani contemporanei.
Scarica gli articoli più belli sul romanzo: da la Repubblica a la Stampa, al Giornale al Corriere della Sera.
Tra i libri di Gary Shteyngart: Absurdistan e Storia d'amore vera e supertriste
- ISBN: 8823508851
- Casa Editrice: Guanda
- Pagine: 0
Recensioni
I. Loved. This. Book. I loved this book so much that I finished it more than a week ago and I am still mulling it over. How can I write a review of a memoir so funny and brilliant and insightful and emotional and just plain good ? My review will never be able to explain everything I admired in Shteyng Leggi tutto
Not my cup of borscht..won this in a Goodreads giveaway for (I hope) an honest review.Gary is a decent writer but it behooves no one to write a biography under the age of 40,particularly one as angst-ridden,juvenile,navel-gazing, and transparently attention-seeking as this.Who will like this book: y Leggi tutto
Thanks to Random House for sending me an advance copy. I've read some preliminary reviews on here dismissive of the writer's young age. "How could someone this young write their life story?" After reading this, I have to ask, how could one not? This memoir was filled with the kind of freedom, braver Leggi tutto
While reading the book I started writing the review as the memories of a young immigrant unfolded on the pages. I thought it was excellent, experienced, eloquent writing, gracing the valuable hours I spent reading it. Many hours it turned out to be, for I constantly fell asleep, due to the fact that Leggi tutto
(4.5) If, like I have, you’ve enjoyed both fiction and nonfiction by Jonathan Safran Foer and Shalom Auslander (whose Hope: A Tragedy was one of my 2012 favorites), you should love this self-deprecating family memoir from the Russian-born (real name: Igor) American novelist. (Oh the irony that h
This was my mother's review of this book, and I don't think I could've said it any better than her: "I have never encountered a family which I found more unappealing. The whole bunch. Gary did his best to portray his family as typical Russian, Jewish immigrants and then tried to justify their booris Leggi tutto
Decades too early, this memoir is about the reconciliation of a writer with his immigrant past-- a full-on "acceptance." I loathed the main character to a certain point-- he is trying desperately to "fit in"... an exercise I myself find totally useless (when in doubt, freak 'em out!). But dangnabbit Leggi tutto
By age 40 George Orwell has been a colonial policeman in Burma, a hop picker in England, a patient in a Parisian charity hospital, and a volunteer fighter in the Spanish Civil War. Kurt Vonnegut has been a soldier, a POW, and a father of three who also adopted three of his dead sister's children. Pa Leggi tutto
If it’s true that every one of us is a book just waiting to be written, then it’s particularly so for Gary Shteyngart. His memoir, Little Failure, should be taught as an example of how memoirs should be written. It’s courageous, poignant, often bitingly funny, entertaining and achingly real. There’s Leggi tutto
Another uneven maddening crazy brilliant Shteyngart book, this time a memoir. The tale begins in early childhood in Leningrad, follows the family's emigration to New York, his attendance at an orthodox Jewish school and attempts to Americanize himself, the shock of entering the highly competitive St Leggi tutto