For novelist Gary Shteyngart, who emigrated from the Soviet Union to New York as a 7-year-old in 1979, books should be able to teach us things, “but they should also be fun.” The author of the novels “Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” “Absurdistan,” and “Super Sad True Love Story,” as well as the memoir, “Little Failure,” Shteyngart brings a Russian flair for satire to his writing, but never forgets the imperative of narrative. Things happen in his books, and they happen, too, in the books he likes best, from George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” to George Orwell’s “1984.”

Below are Gary Shteyngart’s favorite books, available to purchase as a set or individually.