Absurdistan

Shteyngart has a way of making the most ridiculous fictional story sound real. He digs into his Russian heritage to tell of a Soviet republic selling its oil to a multinational company. His father in this telling is an influential criminal who manages to dupe the company into believing all those oil wells out there are sitting on a mass of oil. "It's all yours for the right price." It's a tale of one betrayal after another as the author tries to crawl out from underneath his father's mess.