As usual, Gary Shteyngart’s new novel arrives right on time

The dystopian “Vera, or Faith” explores how a 10-year-old girl’s family experiences democracy’s slide into fascism.

By Ron Charles

Few novelists risk jumping on the runaway horse of contemporary life as recklessly as Gary Shteyngart. For the fiction writer, stuck at the plodding speed of publishing, such a maneuver requires gauging both political velocity and cultural direction. And yet, book after book, Shteyngart arrives just where — and when — we need him to.

Fifteen years ago, his cringingly hilarious “Super Sad True Love Story” depicted a future society hollowed out by social media. In 2018, “Lake Success” satirized the bankrupt materialism of the budding Trump era. And in the fall of 2021, he published a novel about the wild inequities of the covid pandemic — “Our Country Friends” — even while many of us white-collar readers were still happily working from home and complaining about late grocery deliveries. Read the full review at the Washington Post.