Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972. He is the author of the novels The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story, as well as the memoir Little Failure.

He was named one of Granta's Best Young American novelists 2007 and has won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. He writes regularly for the New Yorker. His new novel, Lake Success, is published by Hamish Hamilton in September 2018.