Little Failure: A Memoir

Little Failure: A Memoir

How will I ever measure up to the gentle, smiling giants strolling this land who launch their cars like cosmonauts into the infinite American sky and who live like lords in their castles?'

In 1979 seven-year-old Gary Shteyngart and his parents left the Soviet Union for the consumerist paradise of America. As good Russian Jews, Gary's parents were determined that he make something of himself. As a diminutive asthmatic with a runny nose, Gary knew his was to be a life of spectacular disappointments. He wasn't wrong. In Little Failure he reveals how, by ending up a prize-winning novelist, he visited great shame on his family.

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'Terrific.' Sunday Times

'Frenetically funny, overwhelmingly enjoyable.' Financial Times

'Dazzling, exquisitely charted. Time spent with Shteyngart is like being with Woody Allen on speed: razor-sharp, funny and deeply moving.' Mail on Sunday

'Hilarious and moving.' New York Times

'Seriously funny.' Daily Telegraph

'Terrific, hilarious, beautiful and revealing - Shteyngart's funniest, saddest and most honest work to date.' Guardian

'Witty, heartbreaking and irrepressibly funny. Hilarious.' Observer