Synopses & Reviews
THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTEDABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICSNo 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. Elif Batuman was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. She now lives in Twin Peaks, San Francisco (near the radio tower). She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Prize. She teaches literature at Stanford University. Elif Batumans voiceunpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literaturehas made her one of the most admired writers of her generation. 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 takes her reader to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg as she investigates a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. The student devoted to the Russian classics will 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.
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. The seven essays here are expansive, wide-ranging, almost impossible to categorize, merging criticism and personal experience, scholarship and life. Although bounded by the authors devotion to Russian literature, The Possessed is really a kind of autobiography in reading, in which the characters are Tolstoy, Isaac Babel and Pushkin.”David Ulin, Los Angeles Times "Odd and oddly profound . . . Among the charms of Ms. Batumans prose is her fond, funny way of describing the people around her . . . Perhaps Ms. Batumans best quality as a writer thoughbeyond her calm, lapidary proseis the winsome and infectious delight she feels in the presence of literary genius and beauty. Shes the kind of reader who sends you back to your bookshelves with a sublime buzz in your head. You want to feel what shes feeling."Dwight Garner, The New York Times
The seven essays here are expansive, wide-ranging, almost impossible to categorize, merging criticism and personal experience, scholarship and life. Although bounded by the authors devotion to Russian literature, The Possessed is really a kind of autobiography in reading, in which the characters are Tolstoy, Isaac Babel and Pushkin.”David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
Its not surprising that some people never get over these books, and Batuman, for her part, goes to get a Ph.D. in Russian literature. Meanwhile, she travels through a country just poignant and absurd enough to showcase her capacious sense of humor (which has room for Isaac Babel, romantic mishaps, and missing luggage) . . . The main attraction is Elif Batuman herself.”Benjamin Moser, Harpers Magazine
Hilarious, wide-ranging, erudite, and memorable, The Possessed is a sui generis feast for the mind and the fancy, ants and all. And, unlikely though this may sound, by the time youve reached the end, you just may wish that you, like the author, had fallen down the rabbit hole of comp lit grad school. Batumans exaltations of Russian literature could have ended up in scholarly treatises gathering dust in university stacks. Instead, she has made her subject glow with the energy of the enigma that drew her to it in the first place.”Liesel Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review
Batuman writes with superb wit . . . Theres something melancholy, as well as beautiful, in using literature not just to illuminate experience but actually to create it. Batumans writing waltzes in a space in which books and life reflect each other. The effect is dizzying sometimes, and maybe thats one of her points; her roving sensibility deliriously encompasses many styles and moods. If Susan Sontag had coupled with Buster Keaton, their prodigiously gifted love child might have written this book.”Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times Book Review
For Batuman, the Russian classics are a prism through which we can examine our own lives, whose close study might just lead us toward unlocking what she describes as the riddle of human behavior and the nature of love.”Peter Terzian, The Boston Globe
A hugely engaging mix of scholarly spelunking . . . and subtle personal revelation . . . Batuman, a gifted and almost painfully funny raconteur, encounters literary royalty and astronomer kings, as well as many epically borderline personalities who attend academic conferences. As it turns out, investigating how the lives of the masters informed their art leads to the revelation that oftentimes, its art that gives shape to life.”Megan OGrady, Vogue
Im no great partisan of the Russian novel . . . So when I rave to you, dear readers, about Elif Batumans hilarious and charming The Possessed, understand that the author has entirely bewitched me despite my relative indifference to her subject. Ten pages in, I already knew Id read her on pretty much anything. Which is not to say that The Possessed failed to enlighted me about both Russian books and the people who adore them . . . Im hooked.”Laura Miller, Salon
Wonderfully grotesque, like a cross between Borges and Borat . . . Shows how the life of literary scholarship is really livedat its most ridiculous, and at its most unexpectedly sublime.”Adam Kirsch, Slate
If youre honest with yourself, youll admit that when you hear Russian literature, you think of college classes you wish youd cutand books that can seem as long as a Siberian winter. But in this delightful debut, Elif Batuman makes you look at Russian literature from a fresh perspective, using an unusual blend of memoir and travelogue as she delves into lives and personalities of such Russian literary giants as Isaac Babel, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy.”Scott Martel, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
A rare gem: a genuine affirmation of deep readingof caring about ideas and being carried of by themfrom an exceptional writer whos not event 35.”SF Weekly
Its not often that one laughs out loud while reading a book of literary criticism. In seven delightfully quirky essays that combine travelogue and memoir with criticism, Elif Batumans The Possessed takes us on an unconventional odyssey through the world of Russian literature . . . Part sleuth, part pundit, Batuman both plays the game of literary exegesis and skewers it.”The Christian Science Monitor
Possibly the best thing to come out of a graduate program in recent years . . . By writing about her personal experiences with such charm, Batuman manages to make literature accessible in a way few critics can: She loves the Russians, and because, over the course of the book, you come to love her a little bit, you come to love the Russians as well. Shes an example of not just how to appreciate literature, but how to live life through literaturewithout losing yourself.”The Dallas Morning News
While some parts of the essays read like spy thrillers, others are more like episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, with academic stealing one anothers parking spaces and then giving the finger . . . Batuman does what all great essayists doshe fills her readers with a passion for the subject at hand while simultaneously exploring its complexity.”Simon Van Booy, Bookforum
A good personal-academic essay blends the best qualities of [memoir and literary criticism]: the charm, humor, digressions, and confessions of personal writing with the intelligence, curiosity, and analytical boldness of lit crit. Batuman . . . [gets] the ratios pretty much exactly right.”Sam Anderson, New York magazine
A deeply funny, fiercely intelligent portrait of the not-always-rational pursuit of knowledge. Though Batuman lavishes attention on the specifics of her passionand may indeed inspire you to spend the rest of this winter holed up with a thick Russian novelher book is really about the process of learning itself. Its a relatable, absorbing account of what it feels like to be infatuated with ideas, and to let them lead you to ever more weird and wonderful places.”Eryn Loeb, Time Out New York
"Can the practice of literary scholarship and the art of literary criticism generate true tales of hilarity, pathos, and revelation? Yes, if youre Batuman, a writer of extraordinary verve and acumen who braids together academic adventures, travelogues, biography, and autobiography to create scintillating essays . . . Batuman became enthralled by the great Russian writers, studied Russian, and, after some rough spots, embraced the study of literature as her life calling. Precision is Batumans path to both humor and intensity, whether shes writing about her fellow comparative-lit grad students at Stanford, 'magic' library moments (such as discovering a link between Isaac Babel and King Kong), antic miscommunications at international literary conferences, a visit to St. Petersburgs ice palace, and, in several piquant installments, her strange summer in Samarkand, studying the Uzbek language and literature. Candid and reflective, mischievous and erudite, Batuman writes nimble and passionate essays celebrating the invaluable and pleasurable ways literature can 'increase the sum total of human understanding.'"Donna Seaman, Booklist
"In her first book, a picaresque memoir, Rona Jaffe Prize-winning essayist Batuman takes the reader on a journey both literary and physical as she traces the evolution of her fascination with Russian literature across the globe and several centuries. Batuman writes in a voice that is frank, droll, and at times dryly hysterical. Her devoted, sometimes tangential study of Russian language and literature and the Dickensian cast of characters she meets in its pursuit will strike a chord with anyone who has been to graduate school and amuse even those who haven't. Footnoted translations of quotations in foreign languages would be helpful, but this is otherwise a wildly entertaining romp through academia and the Russian literary pantheon that does justice to a literature that is deservedly praised but underread. Highly recommended for book lovers of all sorts, especially fans of Russian literature or metanonfiction such as Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris and Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road."Megan Hodge, Randolph-Macon College Library, Ashland, Virginia, Library Journal
"Life imitates artand even literary theoryin this scintillating collection of essays. Stanford lit prof Batuman (recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award) gleans clues to the conundrums of human existence by recalling scenes from her grad-student days in academe and exotic settings like Samarkand. A Tolstoy conference sparks her investigation into the possible murder, both physical and metaphysical, of the great man. She spends a summer in Samarkand reading impenetrable works in Old Uzbek as a window into Central Asia's enigmatic present. (Her baffled précis of one legend reads in part, Bobur had an ignorant cousin, a soldier, who wasted all his time on revenge killings and on staging fights between chicken and sheep.) The book climaxes in a Dostoyevskian psychodrama that swirls around a magnetic grad student in the comp-lit department. Batuman is a superb storyteller with an eye for absurdist detail. Her pieces unfold like beguiling shaggy dog tales that blithely track her own misadventures into colorful exegeses of the fiction and biographies of the masters: she's the rare writer who can make the concept of mimetic desire vivid and personal. If you've ever felt like you're living in a Russian noveland who hasn't?Batuman will show you why."Publishers Weekly
Review
"Among the charms of Ms. Batuman's prose is her fond, funny way of describing the people around her . . . Perhaps Ms. Batuman's best quality as a writer though — beyond her calm, lapidary prose — is the winsome and infectious delight she feels in the presence of literary genius and beauty. She's the kind of reader who sends you back to your bookshelves with a sublime buzz in your head. You want to feel what she's feeling." The New York Times
Review
"It's not surprising that some people never get over these books, and Batuman, for her part, goes to get a Ph.D. in Russian literature. Meanwhile, she travels through a country just poignant and absurd enough to showcase her capacious sense of humor (which has room for Isaac Babel, romantic mishaps, and missing luggage) . . . The main attraction is Elif Batuman herself." Harper's Magazine
Review
"Batuman writes with superb wit . . . There's something melancholy, as well as beautiful, in using literature not just to illuminate experience but actually to create it. Batuman's writing waltzes in a space in which books and life reflect each other. The effect is dizzying sometimes, and maybe that's one of her points; her roving sensibility deliriously encompasses many styles and moods. If Susan Sontag had coupled with Buster Keaton, their prodigiously gifted love child might have written this book." Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
"If you're perusing this magazine, chances are you went through a "Russian phase": that period when a curious, intellectually ambitious young reader, primed to enter literary adulthood, finally takes up Crime and Punishment or War and Peace. In The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, Elif Batuman recalls her own adolescent encounter with Tolstoy." Benjamin Moser, Harper's Magazine (Read the entire )
Synopsis
No one who read Elif 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.
Synopsis
One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year
THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED ABSURDLY MELANCHOLICALLY BEAUTIFULLY TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS
No one who read Elif 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.
"
Synopsis
One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year
THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED--ABSURDLY MELANCHOLICALLY BEAUTIFULLY --TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS
No one who read Elif 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.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence — including her own.
Synopsis
THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED--ABSURDLY MELANCHOLICALLY BEAUTIFULLY --TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS
No one who read Elif 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. Elif Batuman was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. She now lives in Twin Peaks, San Francisco (near the radio tower). She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Prize. She teaches literature at Stanford University. Elif Batuman's voice--unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature--has made her one of the most admired writers of her generation. 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 takes her reader to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg as she investigates a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. The student devoted to the Russian classics will 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.
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. The seven essays here are expansive, wide-ranging, almost impossible to categorize, merging criticism and personal experience, scholarship and life. Although bounded by the author's devotion to Russian literature, The Possessed is really a kind of autobiography in reading, in which the characters are Tolstoy, Isaac Babel and Pushkin.--David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Odd and oddly profound . . . Among the charms of Ms. Batuman's prose is her fond, funny way of describing the people around her . . . Perhaps Ms. Batuman's best quality as a writer though--beyond her calm, lapidary prose--is the winsome and infectious delight she feels in the presence of literary genius and beauty. She's the kind of reader who sends you back to your bookshelves with a sublime buzz in your head. You want to feel what she's feeling.--Dwight Garner, The New York Times
The seven essays here are expansive, wide-ranging, almost impossible to categorize, merging criticism and personal experience, scholarship and life. Although bounded by the author's devotion to Russian literature, The Possessed is really a kind of autobiography in reading, in which the characters are Tolstoy, Isaac Babel and Pushkin.--David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
It's not surprising that some people never get over these books, and Batuman, for her part, goes to get a Ph.D. in Russian literature. Meanwhile, she travels through a country just poignant and absurd enough to showcase her capacious sense of humor (which has room for Isaac Babel, romantic mishaps, and missing luggage) . . . The main attraction is Elif Batuman herself.--Benjamin Moser, Harper's Magazine
Hilarious, wide-ranging, erudite, and memorable, The Possessed is a sui generis feast for the mind and the fancy, ants and all. And, unlikely though this may sound, by the time you've reached the end, you just may wish that you, like the author, had fallen down the rabbit hole of comp lit grad school. Batuman's exaltations of Russian literature could have ended up in scholarly treatises gathering dust in university stacks. Instead, she has made her subject glow with the energy of the enigma that drew her to it in the first place.--Liesel Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review
Batuman writes with superb wit . . . There's something melancholy, as well as beautiful, in using literature not just to illuminate experience but actually to create it. Batuman's writing waltzes in a space in which books and life reflect each other. The effect is dizzying sometimes, and maybe that's one of her points; her roving sensibility deliriously encompasses many styles and moods. If Susan Sontag had coupled with Buster Keaton, their prodigiously gifted love child might have written this book.--Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times Book Review
For Batuman, the Russian classics are a prism through which we can examine our own lives, whose close study might just lead us toward unlocking wha
Synopsis
One of The Economists 2011 Books of the Year THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED—ABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!—TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICSNo 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 pieces—for 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 influence—including her own.
Synopsis
A lively, often hilarious, and always warm-hearted exploration of Arabic language and culture, guided by a keen-eyed travel writer with twenty years of experience studying Arabic
Synopsis
After years studying Arabic, Zora O'Neill faced an increasing certainty that she was not only failing to master it but also driving herself crazy. So she stepped away. But, a decade later, she still couldn't shake her fascination and returned to Arabic, this time with a new approach.
O’Neill embarks on a grand tour through the Middle East—to Egypt, the UAE, Lebanon, and Morocco—packing her dictionaries, her unsinkable sense of humor, and her talent for making fast friends of strangers. She travels along quiet, bougainvillea-lined streets and amid the lively buzz of crowded cities and medinas. She jumps off the tourist track, into families’ homes and local hotspots, and makes a part of the world that is thousands of miles away seem right next door.
With lively prose and an eye for the deeply absurd and the deeply human, O’Neill explores the indelible links between culture and communication. All Strangers Are Kin is a powerful testament to the dynamism of language and how learning another tongue leaves you rich with so much more than words.
Synopsis
For longtime Conan Doyle fans as well as readers just discovering Sherlock Holmes, a wickedly smart and rollicking journey through the birth, life, and afterlives of popular culture’s most beloved sleuth
Synopsis
A wickedly smart and rollicking journey through the birth, life, and afterlives of popular culture's most beloved sleuth Today he is the inspiration for fiction adaptations, blockbuster movies, hit television shows, raucous Twitter banter, and thriving subcultures. More than a century after Sherlock Holmes first capered into our world, what is it about Arthur Conan Doyle’s peculiar creation that continues to fascinate us? Journalist and lifelong Sherlock fan Zach Dundas set out to find the answer.
The result is The Great Detective: a history of an idea, a biography of someone who never lived, a tour of the borderland between reality and fiction, and a joyful romp through the world Conan Doyle bequeathed us.
Through sparkling new readings of the original stories, Dundas unearths the inspirations behind Holmes and his indispensable companion, Dr. John Watson, and reveals how Conan Doyle's tales laid the groundwork for an infinitely remixable myth, kept alive over the decades by writers, actors, and readers. This investigation leads Dundas on travels into the heart of the Holmesian universe. The Great Detective transports us from New York City's Fifth Avenue and the boozy annual gathering of one of the world's oldest and most exclusive Sherlock Holmes fan societies; to a freezing Devon heath out of The Hound of the Baskervilles; to sunny Pasadena, where Dundas chats with the creators of the smash BBC series Sherlock and even finagles a cameo appearance by Benedict Cumberbatch himself. Along the way, Dundas discovers and celebrates the ingredients that have made Holmes go viral — then, now, and as long as the game’s afoot.
About the Author
Elif Batuman was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. She now lives in Twin Peaks, San Francisco (near the radio tower). She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Prize. She teaches literature at Stanford University.