The Idiot
Delightful
Clever
Unique

The Idiot

Elif Batuman2017
"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 A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail.
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p.@softrosemint
4.5 stars
Aug 4, 2024
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sina (she/her) @sina
3.5 stars
Aug 3, 2024
Long winded
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Lea@holyfolktales
4 stars
Jul 22, 2024
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yasi@middleschoolbf
4.5 stars
Jul 20, 2024
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4 stars
Jul 7, 2024
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Sohini Roy@sohiniroy121
5 stars
Jul 2, 2024
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2 stars
Jun 17, 2024
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micki@micki
4 stars
Jun 12, 2024
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Heather Margaret@heatherdarling
5 stars
Jun 9, 2024
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Elisavet Rozaki @elisav3t
4 stars
May 20, 2024
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amari@ama-rakki
5 stars
Apr 20, 2024
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Maria@nocturnes
4 stars
Apr 2, 2024
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Rosa@inthemoodforlove
3.75 stars
Mar 25, 2024
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Rosa@inthemoodforlove
3.5 stars
Mar 25, 2024
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lauren amitirigala@laureniscompletelyfine
4 stars
Mar 21, 2024
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Isabella @iscbella
3 stars
Mar 13, 2024
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Naveen Sheik@navsheik
4.5 stars
Feb 28, 2024
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D D D @sunnyd123
4 stars
Feb 17, 2024
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1 star
Feb 15, 2024
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Ashley Denktas@foxface
5 stars
Feb 11, 2024
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Ryan @ryandoesread
2 stars
Jan 19, 2024
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5 stars
Jan 17, 2024
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5 stars
Jan 14, 2024
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syadrina@syadrina
5 stars
Jan 8, 2024

Highlights

Photo of sina (she/her)
sina (she/her) @sina
Page 301
Photo of sina (she/her)
sina (she/her) @sina
Page 19
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sina (she/her) @sina
Page 9
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wen@wennie
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Fredo Moreno@amoreno
Page 47
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Dora Tominic@dorkele
Page 96
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Syrina Akbari@syrinaina
Page 298
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Magdalena@mnrimgreadssometimes
Page 49
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Magdalena@mnrimgreadssometimes
Page 37
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Connie Meade@conniemeade
Page 262
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Helen @helensbookshelf
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Helen @helensbookshelf
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Helen @helensbookshelf
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Helen @helensbookshelf
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Helen @helensbookshelf
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Helen @helensbookshelf
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Helen @helensbookshelf
Photo of Riley
Riley@coldeurydice
Page 54
Photo of Riley
Riley@coldeurydice
Page 36
Photo of Riley
Riley@coldeurydice
Page 16