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From Russia with aplomb April 24, 2003 - CAROLE GOLDBERG A boy leaves Russia at age 7, immigrates to the United States and eventually becomes a writer. His first novel is discovered by novelist Chang-Rae Lee in a pile of submissions to the graduate writing program at Hunter College. The book goes on to become a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and is named a Best Book for 2002 by the Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly. Only in America. The writer is Gary Shteyngart, shown here, and the novel is "The Russian Debutante's Handbook," now out in paperback from Riverhead Books ($14). Shteyngart will read from his novel Wednesday at 7 p.m. at R.J. Julia Booksellers, 768 Boston Post Road, Madison. Shteyngart has been compared to such masters as Waugh, Chekhov and Nabokov, with Woody Allen and Philip Roth thrown in for good measure. The novel is about one Vladimir Girshkin, born in Russia but raised in Westchester County. He crosses an American drug lord, flees to an Eastern European city and becomes the toast of its expatriate community - and the right-hand man for a mobster. The book has drawn enthusiastic reviews for its social satire and madcap humor. The New York Times calls its "wisecracking, lovelorn, desperately self-reinventing protagonist ... a literary symbol for this new immigrant age." |