Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

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With his memoir Little Failure, acclaimed novelist Gary Shteyngart brings the reader through his asthmatic childhood in St. Petersburg, Russia and across the ocean as his family immigrates to the United States. We watch little Gary, née Igor, fumble through integration into American life and grapple with simultaneous love, devotion, and hatred for his parents, whom he perceives to be eternally disappointed in him. Though Shteyngart continues to flounder at the Solomon Schechter School of Queens, the highly competitive Stuyvesant High School and then Oberlin College, he consistently returns to writing as his anchor, and through writing he ultimately escapes his “little failure” status.

Source: Jewish Book Council