Super Sad True Love Story

Set in a near future where digital devices have devalued the word and texting, twittering and networking have replaced reading (either a close-to-the-bone metaphor or a close-to-the-bone-foreboding), Shteyngart constructs an America that has imploded with its own self-importance. Seemingly the last reader left, Lenny (not too far removed from Shteyngart's own intellectual persona) tries to romance Eunice Park, younger than him and very au fait with the digital landscape that has warped the minds of America's young.

Through diary entries, instant relay chats and constant status updates, we watch Lenny's aborted attempts to get Eunice to love him in clawingly hilarious detail, while America absorbs itself in riots, ruins and cosmetics. When Lenny becomes an unwitting reality TV star (in the brilliantly-named '101 People We Should Feel Sorry For'), his love for Eunice, a money spender by trade, must stand the test of a world where words have lost their meaning, and where every touch, embrace and kiss could be mistaken for a commodity.

A hilarious satire on digital consumerism and the death of the attention span, Shteyngart is masterful in never labouring a point and being constantly surprising, satirical and funny in this sign of the times book.