![]() ![]() The previous asylum application Shteyngart made was when his family came from Russia to America when he was seven years old. And that’s how I feel about New York, I’m bored to tears with the New York of the 21st century, the post-Bloomberg New York.” He’s been here only once (he hung out with Paul Murray), but “when I went to Dublin, people were talking about the Dublin that’s now a mini financial hub, and how it used to be a fun, more down-at-heel sort of place. The thing about Russia is that if you're an intellectual you go to another placeĭublin would perhaps not be such a strange home for him. I write very critically about Putin, so I think they'd like to mess with me. Well, we’d have to apply for asylum in Ireland that would be fun, you know, because that would be the second time I’m seeking asylum.” Vancouver, Toronto, Dublin or London are the prime contenders. But I talk with my wife all the time about where we’re gonna flee in 2024 when Trump takes over again. Which seems like a good point to ask: Gary, what the hell is going on in America? There’s also reference to what Philip Roth called the “American berserk” – the notion that the US among developed nations is uniquely unstable and prone to conspiracy and chaos. As well as poking fun at himself in the shape of Senderovsky, the arts and literary worlds are dealt a few blows, along with social media and others. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t plenty of the old Shteyngart satire in there. “What’s interesting is the characters, now that they’re stuck in these locations, are doing their own form of travel in their own minds.” Poking fun And the limitation of characters being stuck together in one place of course enables in the novel conflicts, liaisons, farcical moments – but also moments of depth. His own life in isolation “was sort of like a 19th-century novel” – it was a big event just when friends were coming over. Covid and being in lockdown, he says, invests everything with “a far greater importance”. Yet despite the comic elements and zingy lines in the book, at heart it feels like a more serious prospect than we’ve had from Shteyngart before. The characters who stay at Senderovsky’s home are certainly colourful, including Karen Cho, who has developed a dating app with a difference called Tröö Emotions Dee Cameron, a young essayist Vinod Mehta, a former professor who was put off writing after Senderovsky dishonestly told him his novel was no good and The Actor, whose name we don’t know until the very end but who represents the sort of glamour and fame that seems forever a screen away. I talk with my wife all the time about where we're gonna flee in 2024 when Trump takes over again. (“Thankfully, I’m a little bit more solvent than he is,” the author points out.) Our Country Friends is about a group of friends who shelter from the Covid pandemic at the country home of Sasha Senderovsky, a Russian-born, US-based novelist who bears “certain similarities” to Shteyngart. I said: ‘I dropped that novel I was writing and I have this book – I don’t know how to describe it other than Chekhov’s The Big Chill.’” They’re all about these old friends get together and bemoan the state of their lives. There’s a bunch of Chekhov stories all set in the countryside that I love. “I think the idea was as close to Chekhovian as I get with any of my books. It has, I suggest, a Chekhovian solidity and simplicity to it, aptly enough for a novel steeped in the influence of the Russian master. Even the title, Our Country Friends, is more subdued than the likes of Super Sad True Love Story or Absurdistan. Indeed, it was written quickly because of Covid.Īnd yet what came out of the pandemic for Shteyngart was not a satire that was even angrier than before, but a book less frantic and less bluntly satirical than any of his others. ![]() Our Country Friends is a fine example of the growing genre of Covid fiction despite its chunky size (twice as long as Roddy Doyle’s, Sarah Hall’s or Sarah Moss’s contributions), it was written quickly. His new novel, Our Country Friends, was his best received in many years when it was released a few months ago in the US now it’s out here. It’s also part of him – he’s animated, he gesticulates, embodying the buzzy style that made his earlier novels so funny and so popular. I had no idea if it was good or bad” – I realise the jerkiness is only partly because of wifi problems. Gary Shteyngart is jumping about on my screen due to a shaky Zoom connection – his end or mine, we can’t tell – as he answers my question about whether a seasoned author still gets nervous when a new book is out.Īs he continues – “And I was very unsure about this book. You know, it’s time just to say, as they say in the Mob, ‘This is the life I’ve chosen.’” “I do still get nervous, and I wish I didn’t. ![]()
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