Vera, or Faith - Paperback

by Gary Shteyngart (Author)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A poignant and bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous ten-year-old daughter, by the bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Our Country Friends

LONGLISTED FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE - A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, Washington Post, NPR, Oprah Daily, Vox, Denver Public Library, Seattle Times, The Cap Times, Kirkus Reviews

"Pull up a beach chair: The book of the summer is here. . . . A poignant Harriet the Spy-esque delight."--People (Book of the Week)
"Genius . . . [a] miracle."--The Washington Post
"A novel you can read in one sitting that will stay with you forever."--Karen Russell
"Very funny, very sad, very sharp, and completely delightful."--Elif Batuman
"A brilliant fable about childhood, and so much more, in our broken country."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A must-read."--Los Angeles Times
"Shteyngart is one of the best comedians in literature today."--BookPage (starred review)

The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.

Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.

Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, "one of his generation's most exhilarating writers."

Author Biography

Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His second novel, Absurdistan, was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. His novel Super Sad True Love Story won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and became one of the most iconic novels of the decade. His memoir, Little Failure, was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His most recent novel is the New York Times bestseller Our Country Friends. His books have been published in thirty countries. He lives in New York with his wife and son.