Writing Professor Gary Shteyngart has announced the release of his latest novel Vera, or Faith, forthcoming from Random House in July 2025. The book follows Our Country Friends, a bestselling pandemic novel and one of the New York Times’ Notable Books of 2021.
Vera, or Faith, is named after its protagonist and narrator, the precocious daughter of a family imploding under modern pressures. Her father is a Russian editor leveraging his background for clout amid the war in Ukraine, and she has two mothers: Anne Mom, a cash-poor New England WASP, and Mom Mom, her Korean biological mother. All Vera wants is a friend, her parents to stay together, and to meet Mom Mom. Vera’s encounter with her biological mother reveals her true identity and the secret to love’s survival in trying times.
The novel’s play between generations captures our changing times and their unique pressures. “Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child,” said Penguin Random House. “Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, ‘one of his generation’s most exhilarating writers.’”
Vera, or Faith, is Shteyngart’s seventh book. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. Absurdistan followed and was named one of New York Times’ Ten Notable Books of 2006. Next, bestselling Super Sad True Love Story won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. His memoir Little Failure was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Lake Success was declared a notable book of 2018 by eight major publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Shteyngart also writes for television and worked as a consultant on Succession and The Regime.
