Lake Success Audiobook By Gary Shteyngart cover art

Lake Success

A Novel

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Lake Success

By: Gary Shteyngart
Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Soneela Nankani
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.25

Buy for $20.25

“Spectacular.”—NPR • “Uproariously funny.”—The Boston Globe • “An artistic triumph.”—San Francisco Chronicle • “A novel in which comedy and pathos are exquisitely balanced.”—The Washington Post • “Shteyngart’s best book.”—The Seattle Times

The bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story returns with a biting, brilliant, emotionally resonant novel very much of our times.

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND MAUREEN CORRIGAN, NPR’S FRESH AIR AND NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • Mother Jones • Glamour • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • Newsday • Pamela Paul, KQED • Financial Times • The Globe and Mail

Narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his three-year-old son’s diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart. Meanwhile, his super-smart wife, Seema—a driven first-generation American who craved the picture-perfect life that comes with wealth—has her own demons to face. How these two flawed characters navigate the Shteyngartian chaos of their own making is at the heart of this piercing exploration, a poignant tale of familial longing and an unsentimental ode to America.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION

“The fuel and oxygen of immigrant literature—movement, exile, nostalgia, cultural disorientation—are what fire the pistons of this trenchant and panoramic novel. . . . [It is] a novel so pungent, so frisky and so intent on probing the dissonances and delusions—both individual and collective—that grip this strange land getting stranger.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Shteyngart, perhaps more than any American writer of his generation, is a natural. He is light, stinging, insolent and melancholy. . . . The wit and the immigrant’s sense of heartbreak—he was born in Russia—just seem to pour from him. The idea of riding along behind Shteyngart as he glides across America in the early age of Trump is a propitious one. He doesn’t disappoint.”—The New York Times Literature & Fiction Family Life Funny Satire Literary Fiction Witty Comedy Fiction Genre Fiction
Tragicomic Tale • Clever Writing • Excellent Narration • Compelling Storytelling • Ingenious Plot • Perfect Match

Highly rated for:

All stars
Most relevant
Though our hero has serious blind spots: cheating with stocks, cheating being a dad...
On my shelf now between Trollope and Roth

Loved Barry Cohen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It's quite a feat to make your main character such a schmuck and yet keep the readers kind of hoping that he comes out OK. The last chapter is an upper but the very last paragraph is confusing. Suicide? A second act forBarry? Great reading by the narrators.

Painful but I couldn't put it down

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found the novel revealing a panorama of modern life, full of complexity and beauty. It is both optimistic and compassionate, which are the qualities that we badly need in our contemporary dialogue. It's characters are both complex and charming. The narrator is excellent!

Lake Success, a truly successful novel!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Masterful and compelling storytelling. This tragi-comic tale brings us from the gilded world of hedge funds to the underbelly of the continent - on a madcap and occasionally sordid journey by greyhound bus to places we never knew existed but are not entirely surprised to find. Excellent.

Glorious meditation on America’s 1%

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
seriously got me thinking about my future, what to do if i have kids and etc

GREAT BOOK

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews