If you paid $85 to listen to New York Times bestselling author Gary Shteyngart read from his memoir at Calliope, you might want to stop reading here. Tonight at The Tenement Museum, admission is free to hear the author of Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story discuss his confessional book, Little Failure, in a Q&A with Suketu Mehta, Pulitzer-nominated author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.
Shteyngart and Mehta, an NYU journalism professor, both immigrated to New York in the 1970s (Mehta from India; Shteyngart from the USSR. It was only after moving to the U.S, when he was in elementary school, that Shteyngart was circumcised — one of several mortifying stories featured in the book.)
Not too long ago, Shteyngart — born Igor Semyonovich Shteyngart — was a Lower East Side resident; when he moved out of his 800 square-foot Grand Street apartment in 2009, it was listed for $450,000.
Seating for the 6:30 p.m. event is first-come, first-serve, or you can secure two seats by contacting museum educator Laura Lee (llee@tenement.org, 212-431-0233 ext. 259) and ordering Little Failure ($27). Lee said Shteyngart will sign copies and answer questions from the audience.