If you love Russian literature as much as I do, then Elif Batuman’s book The Possessed is a treat for you. The title refers to Dostoevsky’s novel (also published under the title The Demons) but also to the possessive love of many readers and scholars to the Russian literature in general.
She is the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them and The Idiot. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor, she also holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University.
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman – review Elif Batuman’s comical treatise on reading Russian literature introduces an exciting, if not
In seven delightfully quirky essays that combine travelogue and memoir with criticism, Elif Batuman’s The Possessed takes us on an unconventional odyssey through the world of Russian literature . . . Part sleuth, part pundit, Batuman both plays the game of literary exegesis and skewers it.
Mar 21, 2010 · THE POSSESSED. Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. By Elif Batuman. 293 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Paper, $15. Liesl Schillinger is a regular contributor to the Book Review.
She is the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them and The Idiot. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor, she also holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University.
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Possessed Adventures with Russian Books & the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman available in Trade Paperback on Powells.com, also read synopsis and reviews. One of The Economist’s 2011 Books of the Year THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED
Feb 15, 2010 · “The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them” You don’t have to love Tolstoy to fall for these charming and hilarious tales from the literary fringe Laura Miller
Her adventures, and some of them really are adventures, in the world of Russian (and Uzbek) literature are related in a self-deprecating, insightful and really funny way. The chapter on Babel and on her studies in Uzbekistan are the ones that stand out in my mind.
