What if "The Futurist" visited "Absurdistan?"

Flying to New York last week, I read "The Futurist" by first-time novelist James P. Othmer. Flying back on Monday, I read "Absurdistan" by Gary Shteyngart ("The Russian Debutante's Handbook").

I pretty much read the same damn book coming and going.

Both are geopolitical satires (Othmer's book's funnier; Shteyngart's is more grounded and palatable). Both feature as protagonists grubby anti-heroes with a misplaced sense of entitlement (Othmer: A hot-shot, media-savvy marketing consultant who gets in over his head when a shadow agency with an arcane agenda recruits him; Shteyngart: An obese Russian heir who gets in over his head when he sneaks into a third-world country littered with oil derricks to attain a fake passport); both characters, naturally, strive to redeem themselves. Both feature the sudden death of the protagonist's father.

Both feature an outsized, decadent corporate party in which wealthy, ostensibly civilized men behave in utterly appalling ways (Othmer's is far more outsized, decadent and appalling). Both invoke the spectre of 9/11 (Shteyngart's, in fact, pointedly ends with the protagonist, on Sept. 10, 2001, dreaming of returning to New York City) and both find their protagonists stranded in the middle of an escalating war created with dubious motivations.

Both, truth be told, feature fairly disappointing female characters. And both came out within a month of each other.

And both, I must say, are very good. Othmer's punctures the inane vacuity behind pursuing the Zeitgeist, while Shteyngart's gleefully trashes globalization.

And what arrived in the mail today? Gautama Malkani's "Londonstani," which at first blush doesn't seem too dissimilar, either...