• .
Arts Entertainment
•
.
On The Bookshelf
You Don't Have
To Go Downtown to
Get the Zi
"Tops on my list...
their Filet Mignon"
John Tanasychuk,
`The Russian Debutante'
Self-styled Russian American Jewish author wins
critical praise for his _first novel.
"The best Pizza
in Metro Detroit"
Detroit Free Press, January 8th, 1999
a
SANDEE BRAWARSKY
Special to the Jewish News
• Pasta Specialties • Pizza
• Steaks• Chops • Poultry
• Seafood • Cocktails
OPEN DAILY - LUNCH & DINNER
OPEN WEEKDAYS UNTIL 2:00 AM
WEEKENDS UNTIL 3:30 AM
Ialf
C 01110
S
Italian-American
Family Restaurant
Woodward at 9 Mile • (248) 548-5005
NOVI
43224 W. 11 Mile
In the Novi Town Center
Next to the Movie Theatre
248-347-7444
OAK PARK
25282 Greenfield
SE corner of Greenfield & 696
248-968-2225
BIRMINGHAM
239 N. Old Woodward
Across from the Palladium
248-645-6999
0000622140
• Ribs
•
•
•
•
•
Chicken
• Carry out
Pizza
• Delivery
Pasta
• Catering
Salad
And More
Located near Hiller's Market
39470 W. 14 Mile Road
(248) 960-9200
7/26
2002
80
*****************************************************
*
*
your total food order
Receive 1 0 %
*
*
PICK-UP ONLY
With This Coupon
4**************************************************4617900
* *
*
Off
ary Shteyngart had warned
twice that his apartment
would be a mess, but the
West Village loft looks like
any New York writer's place — full of
books and piles.
Above his couch, a faded Russian-
era poster displays the face of a cosmo-
naut surrounded by rockets and
motorcycles, with the slogan "Learn to
defend the motherland." He bought
the poster here, but it
reminds him of his
childhood in Leningrad.
The visit takes place
on the day Shteyngart
received - the kind of
review in the New York
Times that writers
dream of. The rave
review of his just-pub-
-
lished first novel, The
Russian Debutante's
Handbook (Riverhead
$24.95), predicted a
bright future for the
emigre author.
All morning, he has
heard from friends in
the former Soviet
Union, Rome and
throughout the world. In the many
glowing reviews he's received, he's been
likened to authors Kingsley Amis, Saul
Bellow, Henry Miller, Bernard
Malamud, Vladimir Nabokov, Mikhail
Bulgakov and Salman Rushdie — all
comparisons that please him.
And he's just sold a story to the New
Yorker.
Gary Shteyngart, born in Soviet
Leningrad as "Igor," turned 30 on July
5. His writing is energetic, full of
inventiveness and wisdom, brimmirig
with atmosphere. His 450-page novel
is fast reading, but laugh-out-loud
moments -slow the pace. He leaves the
reader with an engaging and memo-
rable cast of characters and much to
ponder about alienation, identity, exile
and contrasts between East and West.
The book opens in 1995, on the
25th birthday of Vladimir Girshkin,
who moved to America from
Leningrad 13 years earlier. His pursuit
of the American dream doesn't take
the usual path. From his a job as a
junior clerk at the Emma Lazarus
Immigrant Absorption Society, he gets
lured into a series of schemes and
mishaps that take him from his East
Village home to Florida to the imagi-
nary Eastern European city of Prava,
where he gets involved with a Russian
underworld figure named Groundhog.
The author skillfully portrays
Vladimir's New York friends, who
admire his foreign aura, his parents,
who dream of his becoming a lawyer,
his emigre clients at the agency, the
"The Russian
Debutante's
Handbook," by
Gary Shteyngart,
is the first novel of
the new generation
of Russian immigrants
to capture the
imagination of
American reviewers.
young Americans living in Prava
"cruising along on their five-year plan
of alcoholic self-discovery" and his
unusual partners in crime.
In Shteyngart's words, Vladimir is
"the immigrant's immigrant, the expa-
triate's expatriate, enduring victim of
every practical joke the late twentieth
century had to offer and an unlikely
hero for our times."
A wandering Jew who feels at home
nowhere, he's also something of an
escape artist. In one of the final scenes,
he's fleeing Prava: "He ran — there was
not even the time to lie to himself that
he would be back. And lies had always
been important to our Vladimir, like
childhood friends with whom one
never loses an understanding."
A Complex Tale
Shteyngart is the first novelist to .
emerge from his generation of Soviet
Jewish immigrants.