The Blog

Selin is a student at Harvard. The year is 1995. Email is a thing, but not yet a Thing. “The Idiot” is Selin’s story, and it is the debut novel of Elif Batuman, whose work we first read in n+1 and have followed obsessively ever since.

“The Idiot” tracks Selin’s first year at college and the summer that follows. She falls in love for the first time, stays up too late, behaves in mildly reckless ways, and discovers important truths about being a person. She is lovably odd and funny and—terrible word, but it must be said—”relatable.”

We loved Selin and we love this book. Maybe you will too.

 

Tags: apple cake, Dostoyevsky, Elif Batuman, Harvard, n+1, Penguin Press, Sanka, sensible shoes, The Idiot, yearning