The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

"Hilarious, wide-ranging, erudite, & memorable."  — The New York Times Book Review

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 & funny stories of the lives they continue to influence, The Possessed introduces a brilliant & distinctive new voice: comic, humane, charming, poignant & completely, & unpretentiously, full of an infectious love for literature.

"Wildly original, creatively rambling... the funniest book I've read in a long time: its deadpan, dry humour & its accumulation of absurdities will leave you rolling on your floor with laughter." — The Times

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Elif Batuman has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2010. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, & a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humour, she also holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. Her novel, The Idiot, was published in 2017.