I've had this book sitting on my desk for a month now, and I keep meaning to write a review of it. The problem is, it's an awfully hard book to review. This satire of everything stars Misha Vainberg, son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia. Misha's lone goal in life is to return to the US, where he spent his college and young adult years, and where he has a girlfriend of sorts. Alas, he cannot return -- his father, a ganster, has killed an American, and the U.S. Embassy won't let him get a visa.
He concocts a plan with his best friend (with whom he raps -- yes, gansta rap from a 300-pound sturgeon-eating Russian) to go to Absurdistan, one of the outlying countries that is part of the former Soviet Bloc. There, he will secure a fake Belgian passport and move on to the U.S., where his love, an equally obese woman from Harlem whose one acheivement seems to be not getting pregnant, awaits. His plans all go up in smoke as war breaks out in Absurdistan, and Misha ends up, quite literally, running for the hills (this is revealed in the first chapter, so I haven't ruined anything for you).
The reason it's taken me so long to write this review is that this novel -- which is stunning in almost every way, and which made me laugh out loud from start to finish -- is so patently offensive that I'm not even sure how to relate some of its jokes. Well, sure, I can talk about how the whores in Absurdistan give special discounts to employees of "Golly Burton," or about the chapter that focuses on Misha's blown adult circumcision, but the truth is that it's almost impossible to do this book justice in a review. On a literary level, it's easily on par with the best satires of the past hundred years - Confederacy of Dunces, for one - but it also holds its own as literature, and emulates some of the best in classic Russian novels (although without dwelling too much on the details of peasant life, and really spending most of its time making fun of peasants, the rich, and everyone else). But Absurdistan spends the entire time being so politically incorrect that I can think of at least ten people that I wouldn't recommend this to.
So all I can say is this: if you're looking to laugh out loud, you should pick up this book. Unless reading about whores, Halliburton, gangsters, and really, really fat people offends you.