Last night I finished the novel Pygmy by author Chuck Palahniuk. Palahniuk is the same author of the novel, Fight Club, that the movie is based on.

Since Fight Club (the movie) came out, I have always tried to read everything by Palahniuk. He has a perverse and absurd sense of humor that for some reason makes me laugh even though his books usually have a bunch of dark material. Pygmy didn't disappoint.

The book is a little disconcerting at first because it is written completely in Engrish. The main character, Pygmy, arrives in the midwest US as an exchange student from an indeterminate country. Pygmy is part of a terrorist cell who wishes to carry out Operation Havoc with a group of 12 other foreign exchange students.

Besides the subject of terrorism, the book wanders into the territory of abortion, teen pregnancy, religious hypocrisy, extreme patriotism and gay sex. Pygmy, the character, has a tendency to repeatedly quote communist leaders such as Castro and Mao Tse Tung (who I never knew was the originator of the quote "If you have to fart, fart. If you have to sht, sht.").

The funniest bits in the book have to deal with cultural differences. For example, the spelling bee that goes on for hours because the foreign exchange students know how to spell tough english words better than Americans. The whole chapter on what takes place at the Model UN is laugh out loud funny.

Pygmy is not as good as Choke or Lullaby, but it still is an interesting read. I give it three out of four stars.