Possessed
'The funniest book I've read in a long time: its deadpan, dry humour and its accumulation of absurdities will leave you rolling on your floor with laughter' The Times She thought she was a lover of the great classics of Russian literature - until she met the superfans... Roaming from Tashkent to San Francisco, this is the true story of one budding writer's strange encounters with the fanatics who are devoted - absurdly! melancholically! ecstatically! - to the Russian classics. Combining fresh readings of the great Russians from Tolstoy to Dostoevsky with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence, The Possessed is comic, humane, charming, poignant and full of an infectious love for literature. 'Dazzlingly good... Very bookish, very clever and very funny... A preposterously engaging volume' Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph 'The highest compliment you can pay such a book is that it sends you back to the original authors refreshed. I can go one higher - I found myself simply wanting to read more from Elif Batuman' Evening Standard 'An intoxicating mix of travel memoir, autobiography, literary criticism and philosophy... Charming and hilarious' Daily Telegraph
Review: Wildly original, creatively rambling... the funniest book I've read in a long time: its deadpan, dry humour and its accumulation of absurdities will leave you rolling on your floor with laughter * The Times *
Dazzlingly good ... very bookish, very clever and very funny ... [The Possessed is] a preposterously engaging volume -- Jane Shilling * Sunday Telegraph *
The highest compliment you can pay such a book is that it sends you back to the original authors refreshed. I can go one higher - I found myself simply wanting to read more from Elif Batuman * Evening Standard *
An intoxicating mix of travel memoir, autobiography, literary criticism and philosophy... charming and hilarious * Daily Telegraph *
Deeply clever and very funny * Guardian *
Elif Batuman seems at home in that borderland between tragedy and comedy the great Russian writers colonised. The Possessed is insightful, poignant and very funny -- James Meek
Wise and delightfully funny -- Rachel Polonsky
Charming, complex and life-enhancing -- Sarah Bakewell * Sunday Times *
Hilarious, wide-ranging, erudite, and memorable * New York Times Book Review *
Odd and oddly profound ... she's the kind of reader who sends you back to your bookshelves with a sublime buzz in your head. You want to feel what she's feeling. It's tempting to keep quoting her book forever * New York Times *
A vividly engaging travelogue-cum-memoir ... Batuman is an astute observer with a terrific sense of humour and immense bravado -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Batuman's refreshingly unlikely memoir recounts how she decided to devote her life to studying the great Russian novelists ... the result is the funniest book you're ever likely to read about Russian fiction -- Robert Collins * Sunday Times *
The Possessed weaves anecdotes and literary criticism around Batuman's tales of her adventures in America, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Russia ... In some complicated way, this is a book about the relationship between art and life. But it's also a simple book about the relationship between art and life. Or, rather, it's a complicated book about the simple relationship between the two. In the end, all memoirs tend to end up as a defence of something. Batuman's is a defence of reading as a form of living -- Ian Sansom * Guardian *
An eccentric, funny and always perceptive account of the authors long time immersion in the classics of Russian literature * Observer *
I loved Batuman's quirky and perceptive account of her passion for Russian literature ... A move away from objective criticism towards the personal and what books actually mean to people, it is hugely appealing -- Lesley McDowell * Sunday Herald *
Told in nimble and often funny prose * Guardian *
Batuman's very different sentimental education is a wryly brilliant portrait of herself as a young Turkish intellectual emerging among American and Uzbek Russianists and rogues -- Selected by Fiona Sampson as a book of the year * New Statesman *
Prizes: Winner of National Book Critics Circle Award 2010 (UK). Short-listed for PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award 2011 (UK). Long-listed for Guardian First Book Award 2011 (UK).