With his hilarious and moving novels, Gary Shteyngart has established himself as both the poet laureate and the court jester of a new generation of Russian Jewish immigrants. Born in Leningrad, he first burst onto the scene with his bestselling novel The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, for which he won the National Jewish Book Award. He cemented his reputation for humor and literary pyro-techniques with Absurdistan, a scathing and uproarious satire of the post-Soviet world of oligarchs, mobsters, and capitalism gone wild. His most recent novel, Super Sad True Love Story was hailed by The New York Times as “his most powerful and heartfelt novel yet — a novel that performs the delightful feat of mashing up an apocalyptic satire with a genuine supersad true love story.” Shteyngart talks about his life and career—and how the fall of the iron curtain turned into a bonanza for Jewish American fiction. In conversation with Prof. Jonathan Wilson, Director of the Center for the Humanities at Tufts University.