The Idiot
A Harvard freshman in 1995 falls into an email correspondence with an older Hungarian math student.
Elif Batuman’s debut novel is partly based on her own years at Harvard in the mid-1990s. Selin Karadağ, a linguistics freshman, meets an older mathematics student named Ivan in a Russian class, and the two begin writing to each other by email. Her summer takes her to Paris and a Hungarian village. The title nods to Dostoevsky, and the book was a 2018 Pulitzer finalist. Jeff VanderMeer enjoyed it more than almost anything else he read in 2017.
Recommended by 1 Person
Jeff VanderMeer
Batuman has a talent for exposing the absurdity of how we conduct ourselves in the world and the ridiculousness of societal rituals. It's a tribute to Batuman's formidable magic tricks that although the novel fades a bit in the final fifth, I still enjoyed The Idiot more than almost anything I read in 2017.
Article · December 2017
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