Teddy Wayne is part of a canon of literary talent that has found its voice through the achingly-hip McSweeneys, an American journal of new and established literary talent. With this novel, Wayne makes it clear that, although he may be new, he’s well on his way to becoming an established literary talent.

Kapitoil focusses on Karim, a computer programmer from Schrub Industries, who is sent from the office of his home country of Qatar, to the New York head office of the firm, in order to prevent the dreaded Y2K bug. The books strength is it’s ability to make you see New York through he eyes of this logical, meticulous Muslim as he arrives and settles in within the US-based team. It is through these insights, we see see America as other see it. Karim’s naivety and inscrutable application of logic to all situations are done in such a way that we feel an affinity with him almost from the beginning and are touched by his humourous insights into the western way of life.

Karim’s motivation for taking the work in the US are not so much borne out a desire to see the world, but to allow his father, and elderly shop keeper to retire and to pay the tuition fees of his younger sister to get through college. Upon his arrival in the USA, Karim finds his colleagues on the project are very different to how he imagines. His two male co-workers seem obsessed with meeting girls and placing bets. His female colleague, Rebecca, takes Karim under her wings and helps Karim understand office politics.

Uninspired by the Y2K work, Karim develops an equation that allows accurate predictions on oil futures, something that allows his employer to potentially make huge amount of money. However, Karim’s no fool and has copyrighted and password-protected the equation, ensuring the company are wholly reliant on him to exploit it. Despite the best efforts of Schrub head honcho, Derek Schrub, including a hilarious weekend in the country at Schrub’s estate, Karim refuses to sign over the rights to the equation to Schrub Industries. As the pressure mounts, Karim must make choices and be prepared to live with the consequences.

The refreshing thing about this novel is that rather than resorting to cultural stereotypes and cheap gags, Wayne crafts Karim, and indeed all of the other characters as multi-dimensional people, full of contradiction and insecurity. Karim’s dialogue, which forms the basis of the entire book is well-crafted and cliché-free. The result is a refreshingly lively novel with a central character who’s a hero in the truest sense of the word and sets out Teddy Wayne’s stall as an author full of ideas and with many more great novels to come.

Reviewed by Scott Morris

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