Elif Batuman
United StatesAbout
Elif Batuman is an American novelist, essayist, and journalist of Turkish heritage, celebrated for her sharp humour, intellectual curiosity, and observations of modern life. She studied at Harvard University and earned a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. Since 2010, she has been a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes about literature, culture, and travel. Her debut nonfiction book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (2010), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. The Idiot, her first novel, was published in 2017 and became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She continued Selin’s story in Either/Or (2022), further exploring literature, desire, and the search for identity.
