Born in 1972 in Leningrad, Gary Shteyngart moved to the United Stated with his family at the age of seven. After majoring in Political Science he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the Hunter College of the City University of New York. His works, set between real and imaginary cities, are satirical and profound investigations on the life of Russian immigrants in contemporary America. His first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. In 2006 Absurdistan was chosen as one of the year’s best books by “The New York Times Book Review” and “Time magazine”; in 2010 Super Sad True Love Story won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Little Failure (2014), a candid ironic autobiographical story, is his latest book. More of his writings have been published by “The New Yorker”, “Granta”, “Travel and Leisure” and “The New York Times magazine”. In 2007 Shteyngart was Citigroup Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. Today he teaches at Princeton University and lives in New York.