Book Review: From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Freidman, and Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

A year or so ago, I read From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman in an attempt to get my head around the endless conflagrations that dominate the Middle East. At the same time, I was also reading Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, a comic satire about a former Soviet state that fakes a civil war in an attempt to capture the West’s attention and, more importantly, its money. The result was an odd convergence; Shteyngart’s cartoonish satire seemed to cherry-pick, but amplify, the most salient revelations from Friedman's nuanced consideration of the political and social climate in the region.

From Beirut to Jerusalem is the culmination of the ten years Friedman spent in the Middle East, first as a correspondent in Beirut, then in Jerusalem. The book is a document of Friedman's Middle East education: from a zealous pro-Israeli Jewish teenager in Minnesota to an awestruck journalist in Beirut to a grizzled Middle East observer in Jerusalem. Freidman offers a crystalline analysis of the chaos in the region, perpetuated by “Hama rules,” a reference to a small town in Syria leveled by its own leaders in a brutal display of power. Tribal rivalries and brutal sectarianism have always ruled in Lebanon, trumping peace at every turn.

For Friedman, “Hama rules” illustrated his personal “we’re not in Kansas anymore” moment. The irony of Friedman's outlook is the fact that, despite its success, Israel suffered from similar problems as Lebanon, mainly a political paralysis caused, at its root, by tribalism. Friedman concludes, “in Lebanon they called the paralysis ‘anarchy’ and in Israel they called it ‘national unity,’ but the effect was the same: political gridlock.”

To include the word “absurd” in the title of one’s novel would seem a bit on the nose. It has all the subtlety of being slapped in the face by a sturgeon. And that’s the effect Gary Shteyngart is going for in his satirical novel, Absurdistan. It’s the story of Misha Vainberg, a gluttonous man-child (aka Snack-Daddy), the only son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, living in a state of arrested development, pining for all things American in Russia’s post-Soviet capitalist carnival. To avoid his father’s enemies, Misha tries to circumvent diplomatic roadblocks and buy his way to America via the tiny Caspian oil-republic of Absurdistan.

Article Author: Shane Hansanuwat

Shane Hansanuwat writes the Unliterate Review, a literary blog for people who no longer read. He is also a fan of brevity.

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