***New York Times bestseller!***

'A masterpiece . . . There cannot be a more relevant novel for our moment, certainly not one with such beauty of description, depth of feeling, and, as always, humour.'-Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

It's March 2020 and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters includes a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a Southern flamethrower of an essayist; and a movie star, the Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family. Both elegiac and very, very funny, Our Country Friends is the most ambitious book yet by the author of the beloved bestseller Super Sad True Love Story.

'Gary Shteyngart hears America perfectly; its fatuity, its poignant lament, its boisterous self-loathing. Its heartbeat. Reading him sometimes makes me want to scream - with recognition and with pure hilarity' - Richard Ford

'A trip through the American wasteland - from the people who have too little, to the people who have too much. Incredibly smart, incredibly funny, incredibly tragic, and therefore incredibly human, this is the perfect novel for these dysfunctional times' - Nathan Hill

'The funniest book you'll read all year. A rollicking and zinger-filled road trip [that] sneakily deepens into a poignant tale of a man trying to outrace his problems.I was utterly floored' - Maria Semple

'Stupendous... Reflecting with perfect comedy and horrible tragedy exactly what America feels like right this minute... I barked with laughter at the same time as wincing in pain' Elizabeth Gilbert

A riotously satirical road trip through modern America from the brilliant author of Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan

Barry Cohen, master of the universe, has just had a very public meltdown involving a dinner party, an insider trading investigation and a $30,000 bottle of Japanese whisky. So he flees New York City, leaving behind his beautiful young wife and son, but remembering to bring his six favourite designer watches. Zig-zagging south through Trump's America on a Greyhound Bus pilgrimmage he is singularly unprepared for, Barry heads to Texas - to find his old college girlfriend and, with her, a shot at a second chance...

Lake Success marries the trademark Shteyngart wit with an astonishing emotional resonance, capturing the vivid eccentricity and contradictions of America right now while speaking to the universal human experience of love, belonging, and the pursuit of happiness.

Little Failure is an autobiography of comic genius by the hilarious Gary Shteyngart.

Little Failure - its title the same as the alarming pet-name given to the young Gary Shteyngart by his father when growing up in pre-Glasnost Russia - is one of the most remarkable immigrant memoirs ever written.

A candid and deeply poignant story of a Soviet family's trials and tribulations, and of their escape in 1979 to the consumerist promised land of the USA, it is also an exceptionally funny account of the author's transformation from asthmatic toddler in Red Square to 40-something Manhattanite with a receding hairline and a memoir to write.


'Kicks ass - more fantastic, more unbelievable than his novels' Mary Karr, author of The
Liars' Club

'A marvel of a story. His finest book yet' Zadie Smith

'Little Failure is a delight' Aravid Adiga

Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972. In 2007 he was named one of Granta's Best Young American novelists. His debut The Russian Debutante's Handbook was widely acclaimed (and won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction), as were his second, Absurdistan (one of the 10 Best Books of the Year in the New York Times) and Super Sad True Love Story. He writes regularly for the New Yorker.

Eine ungemein zeitgenössische Geschichte, erzählt mit der Haltung eines großen Romanciers: Shteyngart dokumentiert die singuläre Gefühls- und Erlebniswelt des Jahres 2020 und verpackt sie in einen süffig-intelligenten Roman, der Erinnerungen an Boccaccios »Dekameron« und die großen Klassiker der russischen Literatur durchscheinen lässt – versetzt ins Amerika der Gegenwart.

»Gary Shteyngarts Romane sind amerikanisches Kulturgut. Er hat schon immer mit Humor und Herz geschrieben, aber nie so sehr wie hier. Wenn Sie dieses Buch in der Öffentlichkeit lesen, seien Sie bloß vorsichtig: Es kann sein, dass sie laut loslachen müssen – oder dass Ihnen die Tränen kommen.« Jonathan Safran Foer

»Gary Shteyngart gilt als Spezialist des liebevoll Absurden, als ein Meister der Satire, der sich in überbordendem erzählerischem Einfallsreichtum austobt.« Die Zeit

Uno de los mejores libros del año según The New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR,The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews y Financial Times, entre otros, elogiado unánimemente por la crítica.

«Gary Shteyngart capta América a la perfección. [...] Cuando lo leo a veces me entran ganas de gritar: de admiración y de pura risa.»
Richard Ford

Narcisista, vulgar, millonario, infantil, acomplejado, soberbio, displicente, inútil, infatuado, estereotípico, incapaz, irresponsable: Barry Cohen está sobradamente cualificado para ser la desastrosa encarnación del sueño americano. Cuando, acosado por los problemas empresariales, le informan de que a su hijo le han diagnosticado autismo, decide dejarlo todo, abandonar a su familia y embarcarse en una odisea caótica e hilarante en la que recorrerá Estados Unidos en autobús buscando un amor ideal, irreal y perdido hace años. Este viaje de autoconocimiento capaz de arrasar con todo, en el que Barry irá entablando estrambóticas relaciones con quien sale a su paso, es el fiel reflejo de la huida hacia delante de una América que ha perdido el control de sí misma. Este es, a fin de cuentas, el presente de un país que quiere ser grande otra vez, quizá monstruosamente grande.

Mediante la exageración, la deformación y un sarcasmo irrefrenable, Shteyngart pone en la diana el espíritu de la época en una novela corrosiva, escandalosa y tremendamente divertida.

La crítica ha dicho:
«Una de esas novelas (gordas) que te atrapan y no te sueltan desde la primera página, en toda la tradición de la épica estadounidense contemporánea desde Dinero de Martin Amis hasta La hoguera de las vanidades de Tom Wolfe. […] Un retrato extraordinario de “la otra” América profunda».
Silvia Nieto, El Mundo

«Apoyada en el punto de vista y el humor ácido, la mirada desde fuera y desde dentro a la vez, la franqueza que solo podemos encontrar a través de la ironía y el sarcasmo, En Lake Success es una novela tan divertida como profunda. Situada en el punto álgido del Make America Great Again, con Donald Trump ascendiendo los últimos peldaños en su camino hacia la Casa Blanca, Gary Shteyngart aporta muchísimas más claves sobre la fanatización del país».
Roberto Moro, Libros y Literatura

«Esta novela es tan ácida, gamberra e intensa a la hora de rastrear las disonancias y los engaños, tanto individuales como colectivos, que hace que este extraño país parezca todavía más extraño».
The New York Times

«Una ambiciosa novela que es un análisis del “estado de la nación” [...]. Afilada, oportuna y real».

À quarante-trois ans, Barry Cohen, New-Yorkais survolté à la tête d'un fonds spéculatif de 2,4 milliards de dollars est au bord du précipice. Sous le coup d'une enquête de la Commission boursière, accablé par la découverte de l'autisme de son jeune fils, il prend une décision aussi subite qu'inattendue et embarque dans un car Greyhound. Destination : le Nouveau-Mexique où demeure celle qui fut jadis son premier amour, et avec qui il imagine pouvoir refaire sa vie. Une vie plus simple, plus saine, plus heureuse. Commence alors une folle traversée du continent. D'est en ouest, de highways en freeways, Barry découvre une autre Amérique : celle des pauvres, des marginaux, des déclassés. Pendant que sa femme, Seema, entame une liaison avec un romancier, Barry fonce vers une improbable rédemption.


Sans se départir de son humour loufoque, Gary Shteyngart dresse le portrait d'une Amérique déboussolée, à la veille de l'élection de Donald Trump, et nous entraîne dans un road-trip qui tient plus des montagnes russes que du voyage d'agrément.


" Dans Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart entend l'Amérique à la perfection : sa fatuité, sa plainte douloureuse, son dégoût de soi. Le battement de son cœur. Quand je le lis, j'ai envie de hurler de rire, mais aussi de lui crier ma reconnaissance. " Richard Ford


Traduit de l'anglais (États-Unis) par Stéphane Roques.