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  • Published: 30 April 2018
  • ISBN: 9780099583172
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $24.99

The Idiot



The ingenious, hilarious new novel from award-winning writer Elif Batuman - 'It’s a novel about being young and stupid that’s both wise and clever — and it’s a treat' Evening Standard

'I loved it and could have read a thousand more pages of it' Emma Cline, author of The Girls
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018**

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

  • Published: 30 April 2018
  • ISBN: 9780099583172
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Elif Batuman

Elif Batuman has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2010. She is the author of 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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