In Gary Shteyngart’s “Vera, or Faith,” A Child Navigates Family, American Dystopia

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, “Vera, or Faith,” a precocious 10-year old Korean-American girl, with a curious mind and exceptional vocabulary, navigates her way through a dystopian nearfuture. The politics of this America, in which a constitutional amendment to give “exceptional” white Americans more voting rights is being considered, are confusing. But even more so is Vera’s complicated family life that includes a dead mother, a scattered and self-involved father, and a stepmother who Vera is not sure loves her. Reviewers have called the book a “brilliant fable.” We talk to Shteyngart about the future and families. Guests: Gary Shteyngart, writer, Shteyngart's latest novel is "Vera, or Faith" - he is also the author of "Our Country Friends," "Little Failure: A Memoir" and "Super Sad True Love Story" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:13.2	I've ruled out uni because I want to live at home.
0:15.6	I've ruled out uni because I want to earn money.
0:18.9	I've ruled out uni because of my grades.
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0:39.9	The Open University.
0:41.5	The future is open.
0:44.2	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:01.2	Gary Steengart is a novelist who refracts the American experience through the outsiders to the culture.
1:07.0	Like someone learning a new language, he delights in our strange American idioms and customs.
1:12.6	In his new novel, he channels those powers of observation through a wonderful, good-hearted,
1:17.6	and hilarious character, a precocious 10-year-old Korean-American girl with a beautiful mind.
1:23.6	She must navigate a dystopian near future, her parents' explosive marriage, and the social
1:29.3	hazards of the playground to find her birth mother. He's coming up next right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. I always worry now when Gary Steingard put something seemingly implausible in his near-future novels because he has been distressingly sensitive to the ways that our society has
2:02.7	fractured, both our bizarre political institutions and the seductive corrosive dynamics of
2:09.0	digital media. In his new book, Vera or Faith, we encounter a world like our own, but more so,
	...

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