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The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
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The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them Paperback - 2010

by Elif Batuman

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Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence--including her own.

Reader reviews for The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

From the publisher

One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year

From the author of Either/Or and The Idiot, Elif Batuman's The Possessed presents the true but unlikely stories of lives devoted--Absurdly! Melancholically! Beautifully!--to the Russian Classics.

No one who read Batuman's first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. "Babel in California" told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel's last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel's secret influence on the making of King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature.

Batuman's subsequent pieces--for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the London Review of Books-- have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin's wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva.

Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence--including her own.

Details

  • Title The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
  • Author Elif Batuman
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 304
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
  • Publication date 2010-02-16
  • Features Bibliography, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780374532185 / 0374532184
  • Weight 0.59 lbs (0.27 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.22 x 5.6 x 0.81 in (20.88 x 14.22 x 2.06 cm)
  • Category Literature - Classics / Criticism
  • Library of Congress subjects Russian literature - Appreciation
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2009025416
  • Dewey Decimal Code 891.709

Media reviews

Citations

  • Booklist, 02/15/2010, Page 21
  • Entertainment Weekly, 01/07/2011, Page 74
  • Library Journal, 11/15/2009, Page 64
  • Library Journal Prepub Alert, 10/15/2009, Page 57
  • New York Times Book Review, 03/21/2010, Page 13
  • NY Times Notable Bks of Year, 12/05/2010, Page 30
  • Publishers Weekly, 11/02/2009, Page 43
  • Publishers Weekly Best Books, 11/08/2010, Page 28

About the author

Elif Batuman has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010. She is the author of the novels Either/Or, The Idiot, and the nonfiction book The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. 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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The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
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The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

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The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
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The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

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The Possessed : Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
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The Possessed : Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

by Batuman, Elif

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The Possessed : Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
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The Possessed : Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

by Batuman, Elif

  • Used
Condition
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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780374532185 / 0374532184
Quantity available
1
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Item price
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Description:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Used - Good. Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.
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The Possessed : Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
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The Possessed : Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

by Batuman, Elif

  • Used
Condition
Used
ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780374532185 / 0374532184
Quantity available
2
Seller
Item price
A$11.58
Free Delivery to USA

Show details

Description:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Used - Good. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.
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Item price
A$11.58
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