Christina Nichol - Waiting for Electricity

The most exciting and hilarious debut novel in years, a remarkable picaresque set in post-Soviet Georgia--land of corruption, love, and power shortages. In the republic of Georgia, the Communists are long gone, replaced by . . . well, by what? Something much more confusing, that's for sure. But there's one man in Georgia who remains unseduced by corruption, unfazed by nostalgia, and unable to abandon chivalry, no matter how antiquated a notion it may be: Slims Achmed Makashvili, a humble maritime lawyer and the hero of this brilliant novel. In his letters to Senator Clinton, Slims dreams of bringing efficiency, opportunity, and the American dream to his homeland, even as his friends and relatives embrace decadence, lethargy, and a staggering array of unsavory business practices. A gleeful picaresque, a hilarious satire, and a work of extraordinary empathy and imagination, Waiting for the Electricity is a marvelously imaginative debut novel in the tradition of Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated and Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan.

Christina Nichol won the 2012 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award.  She grew up in the Bay Area and studied at the University of Oregon and received her MFA from the University of Florida. She has traveled widely, worked for nonprofit film companies, and has taught in India, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and, of course, Georgia.

 

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