A review by ruthiella
Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne

4.0

I didn’t love The Love Song of Johnny Valentine by Wayne and I approached this book, his debut, with some trepidation…and I really LIKED it! This is a fish-out-of-water story featuring Kamil, a young Quatari programmer who comes to New York City to work on the Y2K project of a huge, U.S. multinational financial institution. When Kamil invents a program to predict the fluctuations of oil prices, his dreams are all about to come true, if he can navigate the pitfalls of American greed and capitalism. The story goes pretty much where one expects it to go, it is sort of a twist on a fairy tale, but told realistically – no magic realism here. Kamil is utterly adorable. He is nerdy yet kind and his misunderstandings about American culture are often very funny.