Super Sad True Love Story
Gary Shteyngart
 The son of a Russian immigrant, protagonist Leonard (Lenny) Abramov, a middle-aged, middle class, and otherwise unremarkable man whose mentality is still in the past century, falls madly in love with Eunice Park, a young Korean-American struggling with materialism and the pressures of her traditional Korean family. The chapters alternate between profuse diary entries from the old fashioned Lenny and Eunice's biting e-mail correspondence on her "GlobalTeens" account. In the background of what appears to be a love story that oscillates between superficiality and despair, a grim political situation unravels. America is on the brink of economic collapse, threatened by their Chinese creditors. In the meantime, the totalitarian Bipartisan government's main mission is to encourage and promote consumerism while eliminating political dissidents. In the midst of all this, in a world where anyone's sexuality can be rated at the touch of the screen, where the privileged can live forever but the unfortunate die too soon, there is still value to being a real human being.