The Idiot

Author(s): Elif Batuman

Fiction | Eliza | Bryony | Jasmine | tessa

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 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. 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, Batuman's heroine shows us with perfect hilarity and soulful inquisitiveness just how messy it can be to forge a self.


Product Information

A New York Times Book Review Notable BookFinalist for the Pulitzer Prize for FictionShortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018

"An addictive, sprawling epic; I wolfed it down."--Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man and It Chooses You "Easily the funniest book I've read this year."--GQ

General Fields

  • : 9780099583172
  • : Random House
  • : Vintage
  • : 0.298
  • : March 2018
  • : ---length:- '19.8'width:- '12.9'units:- Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Elif Batuman
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 813/.6
  • : near fine
  • : 432
  • : FA