Gary Shteyngart: Our Country Friends

Award winning author Gary Shteyngart visits City of Asylum to read from and discuss his NY Times best-selling novel Our Country Friends. 

About the novel: In the rolling hills of upstate New York, a group of friends and friends-of-friends gather in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, relationships will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate 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.

The novel is elegiac and very, very funny, and Gary’s visit promises to be just as ripe with emotion and laughs.
In conversation with John Allison, an editor with Trib Total Media.

About The Author:

Gary Shteyngart is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Little Failure (a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist) and the novels Super Sad True Love Story (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Lake Success, Absurdistan, and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction). His books regularly appear on best-of lists around the world and have been published in thirty countries. His latest novel, OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS, was an instant New York Times bestseller and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, Kirkus Review, and others. 

This program is part of the Pittsburgh International Literary Festival (LitFest ’22). Learn more about the LitFest lineup.

About your visit:

Remember you can dine at the in-house restaurant 40 North before, during, or after the show. Please visit Open Table or call 412-435-1111 to make a reservation.