Originally from what is now St. Petersburg, Russia, Gary Shteyngart pulls his writing from the experiences of his Soviet childhood and Jewish upbringing. His first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, won praise, as did his follow-ups, Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story, which was about social media marketing. His stories have been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and he’s not-so-secretly known to offer a blurb to seemingly every new book, all of which are collected on a fan’s tumblr. He’s known for an acerbic self-deprecating humor, which is in the same style as his novels