 He is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City, and Oberlin College in Ohio, where he earned a degree in politics, in 1995, with a senior thesis on the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Moldova and Tajikistan.After Oberlin, he worked a series of jobs, as a writer, for non-profit organizations in New York.Shteyngart took a trip to Prague in the early 1990s, and this experience helped spawn his first novel, "The Russian Debutante's Handbook", set in the fictitious European city of Prava.