Elif Batuman | Granta

Elif Batuman

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). Her writing has been published in the New Yorker, n+1, Harper’s, LRB and the Guardian. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. This is her first book.

Publications

The Possessed

Elif Batuman

Roaming from Tashkent to San Francisco, this is the true story of one budding writer’s strange encounters with the fanatics who are devoted – absurdly! melancholically! ecstatically! – to the Russian classics. Combining fresh readings of the great Russians from Gogol to Goncharov with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence, The Possessed introduces a brilliant and distinctive new voice: comic, humane, charming, poignant and completely, and unpretentiously, full of an infectious love for literature.