The Idiot

Zusatztext

<p><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018</b></p><p>Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard and finds herself dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood. She studies linguistics and literature, and spends a lot of time thinking about what language and languages can and cannot do. Along the way she befriends Svetlana, a cosmopolitan Serb, and obsesses over Ivan, a mathematician from Hungary.</p><p>Selin ponders profound questions about how culture and language shape who we are, how difficult it is to be a failed writer, and how baffling love is. At once clever and clueless, Batumans heroine shows us with perfect hilarity and soulful inquisitiveness just how messy it can be to forge a self.</p>

Autorenportrait

<b>Elif Batuman</b>has been a staff writer at the<i>New Yorker</i>since 2010. She is the author of<i>The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them</i>. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and a<i>Paris Review</i>Terry Southern Prize for Humor, she also holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University.

Weitere Details