Little Failure

A memoir for the ages ... Un-put-down-able ... Little Failure is his best book to date

Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club

One of America's most exciting writers

Guardian

Shteyngart has carried the spirit of Russian literature into the iPhones, subways and suburbs of America

Financial Times

A marvel of a story. His finest book yet.

Zadie Smith

People who think Gary Shteyngart is a very funny man and a complete pervert are in for a shock by the time they finish this memoir: he turns out to be a very complete man and a funny pervert. Little Failure is a delight

Aravind Adiga

I'm always wary when a young writer offers up a memoir, but Gary Shteyngart delivers big-time with Little Failure. His family's story is quite remarkable, and it's told with fearlessness, wisdom and the wit that you'd expect from one of America's funniest novelists

Carl Hiaasen

If you, like me, have often wondered: How did Gary Shteyngart get like that? Little Failure is the heartfelt, moving, and truly engaging memoir that explains it all. Dr. Freud would be proud

Nathan Englander

Portnoy meets Chekhov meets Shteyngart! What could be better?

Adam Gopnik

Hilarious, moving, compelling . . . Thanks to Little Failure, the army of readers who love Gary Shteyngart is about to get bigger

The New York Times

Hilarious. Raw, moving, uproarious and melancholy all at the same time

Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Gary Shtengart uses his immigrant experience . . . to capture a generation of middle-class Americans and give us a beautifully rendered world of orange-coloured cheese puffs and Cold War menace

Times Literary Supplement

Witty and heartbreaking

Observer

Painfully funny and haunting

Sunday Times

Wonderful, funny

Independent

A powerful and often moving portrait of a troubled man's creative origins. Little Failure is terrific . . . the author's funniest, saddest and most honest work to date

Guardian

By turns naïve and cynical, hyper-intelligent and comically immature . . . a masterpiece of comic deprecation

Daily Telegraph

A near-perfect account of the churning state of one man's inner life . . . irresistibly funny . . . tinged with sadness

Sunday Times

Deeply moving, big-hearted, meaningful and poignant. Mr Shteyngart is funny - and not just knowing-nod, wry-smile funny, but laugh-aloud, drink-no-liquids-while-reading funny. [And]] underlying his writing, always, is yearning, love and often deep sadness

Economist

Mr Shteyngart's evocative new memoir, Little Failure, is as entertaining as it's moving. . . keenly observed tale of exile, coming-of-age and family love: It's raw, comic and deeply affecting, a testament to Mr Shteyngart's abilities to write with both self-mocking humor and introspective wisdom, sharp-edged sarcasm and aching - and yes, Chekhovian - tenderness

Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

If you thought his fiction was funny, read Shteyngart's memoir. [A] deeply moving, honest evocation of growing up

New York Magazine

Nimbly achieves the noble Nabokovian goal of letting sentiment in without ever becoming sentimental

Washington Post

An ecstatic depiction of survival, guilt and perseverance. . . . Russia gave birth to that master of English-language prose named Vladimir Nabokov. Half a century later, another writer who grew up with Cyrillic characters is gleefully writing American English as vivid, original and funny as any that contemporary U.S. literature has to offer. That writer is Gary Shteyngart

Los Angeles Times

Dazzling, highly enjoyable book. Little Failure is a rich, nuanced memoir. It's an immigrant story, a coming-of-age story, a becoming-a-writer story, and a becoming-a-mensch story, and in all these ways it is, unambivalently, a success

Meg Wolitzer, NPR/All Things Considered

Harrowing yet hilarious

Wall Street Journal

Little Failure finds the delicate balance between side-splitting and heart-breaking

Oprah Magazine