The Idiot
Descriere
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.
Despre autor
Elif Batuman este o autoare, academiciană și jurnalistă americană. Este autoarea a trei cărți: o memorie, The Possessed (2010), romanul The Idiot (2017), care a fost finalist pentru Premiul Pulitzer pentru ficțiune în 2018, și Either/Or (2022). Batuman este scriitoare pentru The New Yorker.
