A great book, courtesy of Eric. Set in the very near future – 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? It’s primarily told through the lens of Lenny Abramov, a New Yorker who works for ‘Post-Human Services’, the company that, if you have the money, can extend your life through medical ‘enhancements’.
What’s fantastic about the book is that Shteyngart has taken a few key things about America now (book written in 2010) and extrapolated them out. So, there are war vets coming back from a conflict with Venezuela, you want your dollars to be pegged to the yuan, people are split into HNWI (High Net Worth Individuals) and LNWI’s, they’ve stopped publishing books, Lenny travels on UnitedContinentalDeltamerican and the good jobs are in Media and Credit.
So, the culture and what people deem important (or not) is entirely believable given where America’s at at the moment. He then overlays some understandably self-centred and vacuous people trying to cope with some momentous events. It’s very funny and entirely plausible.
Possibility 