Possessed : Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

English

ISBN: 0374532184

EAN: 9780374532185

Category: Literary Criticism / Russian & Former Soviet Union

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Release Date: 03/22/2010

Synopsis: THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTEDABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS No one who read Elif Batumans 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 Babels last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babels 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. Batumans subsequent piecesfor The New Yorker, Harpers 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 Tolstoys ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkins 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 influenceincluding her own.

Awards: Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year – null  Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year – null 

Excerpt: Unknown Property Excerpt

Possessed : Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

Illustrated: Yes

Format: Paperback

Height: 0.81 inches

Width: 5.46 inches

Length: 8.26 inches

Weight: 9.63 oz

Pages: 304