EAN: 9780374532185

THE POSSESSED - ELIF BATUMAN TASCHENBUCH

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.

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