Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart, Read by Rob Shapiro
Quarantine in Upstate New York!
Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens.
Rob Shapiro deftly narrates Our Country Friends, a Chekhovian study of Sasha, a Russian-American writer; his Russian-American wife, Masha, a psychiatrist; and their precocious 8-year-old adopted daughter, Natasha. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Sandi Henschel talk about this story set during the start of the Covid pandemic, when a group of friends is invited to stay at an upstate NY bungalow colony “until the threat of the virus is gone.” While the novel contains many elements of a comedy of manners, its impact is elevated by skillful presentations of the challenges facing first-generation Americans.
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