Staff Picks Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart

 Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart

One of my favorite recent reads describes a modern dystopia through the eyes of a young girl of Jewish and Korean descent. 

Intelligent and curious, ten-year-old Vera Bradford-Shmulkin’s observations about her father and stepmother raise concerns about her own family's stability and the state of the America in a post-democratic world. Struggling to form lasting friendships while striving for academic success, Vera questions what she's been told about her absent birth mother and forms a plan to locate her. 

Vera, or Faith is witty, insightful and equal parts charming and terrifying in its vision of a radically altered United States. 

Gary Shteyngart is a bestselling and award-winning author whose books have been published in thirty counties. His 2014 memoir Little Failure, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, describes his early writing and his family’s journey from his birthplace in Leningrad to the United States when he was seven years old. 

Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, published in 2010 won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, the first time an American author has won the prestigious award, while Our Country Friends, published in 2021 was a New York Times bestseller. 

Gary Shteyngart’s work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, Granta, and The Atlantic.

Alicia Cavitt

Information Specialist