led to his debut novel, Lie in the Dark, which won Britain’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first crime novel. Subsequent books have won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller, the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, the Barry Award for best thriller, and selection by USA Today as the year’s best mystery/thriller novel.
Fesperman's new novel is Pariah.
At Lit Hub he tagged five favorite novels "set in seemingly realistic locations that exist in the here and now, and often within real continents and regions." One title on the list:
Read about the other entries on the list at Lit Hub.Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan
This satirical romp from 2006 has everything you’d want in a novel set in an imaginary former Soviet Republic. Its unforgettable hero is the obese manchild, Misha Vainberg, son of a murdered Russian oligarch. Vainberg, by using a fake passport, has taken refuge in Absurdsvanï—aka Absurdistan—which is being torn asunder in its post-Soviet rebirth by a clash of Slavic ethnic groups, the Sevo and the Svanï.
The basis of their conflict? A dispute over which direction the footrest of the Orthodox cross should be tilted.
--Marshal Zeringue
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