Lost Shin Shin من عند Pratochnaye, روسيا البيضاء من عند Pratochnaye, روسيا البيضاء

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Sure, not to the extent that I enjoyed "The Russian Debutante's Handbook," but that is to be expected (even authors can tend to suffer from the dreaded Sophomore Slump). That said, it is easy to understand how Aburdistan ended up on so many respectable book critics top ten of 2006 lists. It is biting satire, and by biting I mean teeth wrapped around your jugular satire. It's at times sweet, sentimental, hilarious, repulsive, and obnoxious. The main complaint I have is that the characters, aside from the rotund protagonist Misha, are rather flat and two-dimensional. This can be over-looked at times because the book isn't so much about the plot but more about the situations that it is satirizing, which it does exceedingly well. On the whole, the book succeeds as a tongue-in-cheek piece of socio-political commentary but fails as a novel. Still, well worth the read.