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Penguin Press

9781594205613

STARRED REVIEW
Comic Fiction, Debut Fiction

The Idiot

By Elif Batuman

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Review of ‘The Idiot’

Human relationships are tricky: They’re built on communication, which relies on language. And language, of course, is unreliable. This is the frustrating truth at the heart of The Idiot, Elif Batuman’s debut novel.

Batuman, a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010 (and author of the 2010 essay collection The Possessed), says her novel…

Interview with Elif Batuman

New Yorker writer Elif Batuman puts an absurdist twist on the traditional campus novel in a smart and original fiction debut.

Featuring ‘The Idiot’

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After much discussion and determined lobbying for our personal favorites, the editors of BookPage have reached a consensus on the year’s best books. These are the books we can’t forget—and can’t stop sharing with readers wherever we go.


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