Elif Batuman
Turkey/USA
Elif Batuman was born in the USA in 1977 to Turkish parents and grew up in New Jersey. The author completed her PhD at Stanford University, where she also taught until 2010. Her debut novel, The Idiot – the first instalment of a major four-part Bildungsroman – was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
Either/Or, the second instalment in the series, also follows Selin Karadağ, a literature student who loses herself in the whirlpool of existential selfquestioning, yet also finds herself. Batuman breathes new life into the campus novel genre, skilfully weaving Kierkegaard into a coming-of-age story and blending heartbreak with the academic milieu. Her narrator questions the conventions that shape our literary canon as well as our entire way of living together. Here, Elif Batuman offers an impressive fundamental critique of life, “without the result being a book heavy with meaning or even bitterness”, as the FAZ writes. Instead, the author delivers a clever exploration of ethics and aesthetics.
Entweder/Oder. Novel. Translated from English by Claudia Wenner. Beck 2023
Die Idiotin. Novel. Translated from English by Eva Kemper. Fischer 2017
Die Besessenen. Abenteuer mit russischen Büchern und ihren Lesern. Translated from English by Renate Orth-Guttmann. Kein & Aber 2011
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