Anthologies#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| n+1 Issue 9: Bad Money |
2010 |
Buy |
Non-Fiction#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| The Possessed |
2010 |
Buy |
Standalone Novels#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| The Idiot |
2017 |
Buy |
| Either/Or |
2022 |
Buy |
Elif Batuman grew up in New Jersey as the daughter of Turkish immigrants and studied literature at Harvard before earning a PhD in comparative literature at Stanford. She joined The New Yorker as a staff writer, where she has published essays and reporting on subjects ranging from Turkish politics to Russian literature to the experience of living abroad.
Her first book, The Possessed (2010), is a nonfiction work about her adventures in the world of Russian literary scholarship. It covers ice fishing at a Tolstoy conference, the mystery of a lost Pushkin novel, and other stories from the overlap between academic life and literary passion. She followed it with two novels, The Idiot and Either/Or, both following a Harvard freshman named Selin through the confusions of email, language classes, and a drawn-out crush on a Hungarian math student.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many books has Elif Batuman written?
Elif Batuman has written four books across three series.
What was Elif Batuman's first book?
Elif Batuman’s first book is The Possessed, published in 2010.
What is Elif Batuman best known for?
She is best known for The Idiot (2017) and its sequel Either/Or (2022), semi-autobiographical novels about a young woman named Selin navigating college, language, and unrequited love at Harvard in the mid-1990s.