4 ideas
Misha Vainberg, the 325-pound, hip-hop-loving son of Russia's 1,238th-richest man, is refused a US visa after his father murders an Oklahoma businessman, which cuts him off from his South Bronx girlfriend Rouenna. After his father is killed, he goes to the Caspian oil republic of Absurdsvanï to buy a Belgian passport from a corrupt consular official. He is trapped there when civil war breaks out and is made Minister of Multicultural Affairs.
Absurdsvanï's ruling factions stage their ethnic war as a spectacle for Western powers, not to win it. Their oil reserves are secretly running out, so the violence exists to draw American attention, reconstruction money and defense-contractor deals, the novel's 'Golly Burton.' In a resource economy dependent on foreign patrons, conflict becomes a product sold to outsiders.
The warring Sevo and Svani peoples are divided mainly by which way the footrest slants on their Orthodox cross. The novel uses this near-invisible theological detail to show that the size of an identity difference does not predict how violent it becomes. What matters is whether elites have an incentive to turn the difference into a mobilizing grievance.
As Minister of Multicultural Affairs, Misha is tasked with a museum proposal that presents Sevo-Jewish friendship to Western donors. In this case the novel shows history and multicultural vocabulary being packaged for rich foreign patrons in the hope of money and legitimacy.