The Idiot
United States

The Idiot

by Elif Batuman

Coming of Age Contemporary Fiction 2017

Summary

It’s 1995, email is new, and Harvard freshman Selin Karadağ is trying to figure out how language, love, and life actually work. The daughter of Turkish immigrants, she befriends a charismatic Serbian classmate and begins exchanging increasingly mysterious emails with Ivan, an older Hungarian mathematics student. When their ambiguous relationship follows her from university to the Hungarian countryside, Selin finds herself navigating first love, cultural misunderstandings, and the bewildering transition to adulthood. Witty, intellectually curious, and quietly moving, The Idiot captures the awkward beauty of becoming yourself when you have no idea who that person might be. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it is a coming-of-age story for readers who think too much and feel more than they can explain.

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Country
United States
North America
About the author
Elif Batuman
Elif Batuman

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.

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Details
Published
2017
Author
Elif Batuman