Speakers: Gary Shteyngart, Sarah Churchwell

Little Failure is the alarming pet-name given to the young Gary Shteyngart by his father when growing up in pre-Glasnost Russia is a remarkable immigrant memoir. A candid and poignant story of a Soviet family’s trials and tribulations, and of their 1979 escape to the consumerised promised land of the United States, it is also an exceptionally funny account of the author’s transformation from asthmatic Moscow toddler to 40-something Manhattanite with a receding hairline and a memoir to write.

As Shteyngart says, I’ve finally written a book that isn’t a ribald satire, and because it’s actually based on my life, contains almost no sex whatsoever. I’ve lived this troubled life so others don’t have to. Learn from my failure, please.