The Idiot
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Summary
Discover TikTok's new favourite book.
'I loved it and could have read a thousand more pages of it' Emma Cline, author of The Girls
Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard with no idea what to expect. What she doesn't expect is:
- How much time she will spend thinking about language and its limitations
- An opinionated cosmopolitan Serb named Svetlana, who will become her confidante
- A mathematician from Hungary called Ivan, whom she will obsess over when she is supposed to be studying
- Feeling dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood
But most of all, Selin does not expect to embark on a study of precisely how baffling love can be when you are trying to forge a self...
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PRAISE FOR THE IDIOT:
'A moving, continent-hopping coming-of-age story' Observer
'Elif Batuman surely has one of the best senses of humour...refreshing and unique' Sheila Heti
'Full of zingy one-liners' Financial Times
'Hilarious, brilliant observations about writing, life and crushes' Curtis Sittenfeld
'Delightful and slyly funny' Red
'I loved it and could have read a thousand more pages of it' Emma Cline, author of The Girls
Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard with no idea what to expect. What she doesn't expect is:
- How much time she will spend thinking about language and its limitations
- An opinionated cosmopolitan Serb named Svetlana, who will become her confidante
- A mathematician from Hungary called Ivan, whom she will obsess over when she is supposed to be studying
- Feeling dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood
But most of all, Selin does not expect to embark on a study of precisely how baffling love can be when you are trying to forge a self...
_____
PRAISE FOR THE IDIOT:
'A moving, continent-hopping coming-of-age story' Observer
'Elif Batuman surely has one of the best senses of humour...refreshing and unique' Sheila Heti
'Full of zingy one-liners' Financial Times
'Hilarious, brilliant observations about writing, life and crushes' Curtis Sittenfeld
'Delightful and slyly funny' Red
Reviews
I loved it and could have read a thousand more pages of it. It presented this almost moment-by-moment experience of life, in a way that I just felt Batuman had so much control. There’s so much wit and pleasure in her writing you feel very comfortable being in the world she’s created.
Emma Cline, author of THE GIRLS
