One Of Shteyngart's Novels Is Coming To TV

Here is a super true, not-at-all sad book story. Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story will be a TV series, thanks to Ben Stiller and and the studio behind House of Cards.

Super Sad True Love Story is a novel about Lenny Abramov, the son of a Russian immigrant in a futuristic world that is falling apart. He loves what once were known as books and a woman named Eunice. He hopes that the nation's Chinese creditors won’t foreclose on America, now tech-hungry and broke. Super Sad was heralded by journals and magazines worldwide as a must-read and won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.

Gary Shteyngart is a prolific writer of memoirs, novels, and blurbs. (Shteyngart has said of himself, “Gary Shteyngart blurbs are touching, funny and true. This is a blurber to watch.”) Which is all pretty amazing, considering his (not actually true) terrible secret:

"I can't read!" Shteyngart admitted in this touching, if fictitious, mini-documentary.

Stiller has bought the rights to a television series with Media Rights Capital and he will also be directing a few episodes, according to The Christian Science Monitor. Shteyngart and screenwriter Karl Gajdusek (most recently of Last Resort and Dead Like Me) have adapted the novel into a serialized dramedy and will co-produce. And while MRC is exploring casting options, they have yet to send the series out to the networks. So waiting on a release date might be, well, a wait.

Shteyngart's Facebook response to the news that Ben Stiller would be joining the series was as succinct and expressive as his prose. Wrote Shteyngart, "Wooooohooooooo!"

Image: Getty Images