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The Possessed

By Elif Batuman

Product Image: The Possessed

The Possessed

Only 1 item left in stock
Description
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.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Number of Pages:
306
Release Date:
2010-02-16
Publication Date:
2010-02-16
Publisher:
St. Martins Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0374532184
ISBN13:
9780374532185
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
283 g
Height:
139 cm
Width:
211 cm
Thickness:
22 cm

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Items bear visible signs of previous use, be it through distinctive notes or scratches on the surface. Despite these signs of wear, the items remain functional and tell a story of their previous owner with each scratch.
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