Either/Or: From the bestselling author of THE IDIOT

Description

A pitch perfect encapsulation of one young woman's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood In 1996, Selin, the bookish, language-obsessed daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives at Harvard University for her second year. Having spent the summer teaching English in the Hungarian countryside while obsessing over her crush, Ivan, Selin is determined to untangle from her unrequited infatuation, and shed her first year innocence. With her English syllabus as a rough guide, and her more worldly and confident peers as instructors, she resolves to become her own main character and throws herself into undergrad life- joining the literary magazine, attending house parties, and taking it into her own hands to spark her sexual awakening. A Russophile at heart and set on getting herself - and her improving Russian-language skills - to the motherland, Selin takes a paying summer job with the student-run guidebook, but is sent not to a different or exotic locale, but, disappointingly, Turkey. But the Turkey of her childhood trips quickly takes on new and rich meaning, as Selin travels from city to city, absorbing the land of her ancestors. She meets people on her way, men who reveal new parts of herself and others who heighten the contradictions she sees in the world around her. Every moment becomes an opportunity to seize the day, to move away from others' expectations and towards a life of her own making. With great observation, wit, and empathy, Elif Batuman perfectly captures the mystifying uncertainties to be found at the cusp of adulthood. Filled with the mundanities alongside the comedy of youth, and as entertaining as it is intellectual, Either/Or captures a forging of a self, and is a wonderfully complex illustration of a woman finding the freedom to step outside the script.

Elif Batuman has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2010. She is the author of The Possessed- Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor, she also holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University.

Our funniest overthinker - and the queen of the campus novel... Selin is a droll and disarming narrator, and takes her place as one of the finest hapless scholars in the literary canon. -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * Sunday Times * Batuman has a gift for making the universe seem, somehow, like the benevolent and witty literary seminar you wish it were . . . This novel wins you over in a million micro-observations. -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times * A richly suggestive and amusing book. -- Jonathan Derbyshire * Financial Times * A charming, mordantly funny follow-up to her first novel... triumphal. * Daily Mail * Such an enchanting writer. -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * Sunday Times * Either/Or is both an entertaining campus novel and an engaging disquisition on the very nature and purpose of novels. * Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022* * Stupendous . . . hilarious... Batuman is a genius, rendering human folly at its most colorful and borderline surreal -- Lauren Mechling * Vogue * [A] charming, smart and completely idiosyncratic take on art, life and the gap between. -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail, *Books to Look Out For 2022* * The central pleasure of reading Elif Batuman's ferociously intelligent fiction...[is] the thrill of encountering things you already half-knew, rendered in language with lyrical precision... hopefully, there will be a third installment of the adventures of Elif Batuman's brilliantly modern picaro. * Times Literary Supplement * Delightful... Batuman has a formidable deadpan wit... Selin is not only an astute observer but displays a touching capacity for awe. * Spectator * Wonderfully idiosyncratic... Charming -- Alex Clark * Guardian * Selin, the magnetic protagonist in Batuman's brilliant and comedic first novel, The Idiot (2017), returns . . . Selin reads and ponders the human condition, culminating in a breath-catching ending that will leave spellbound readers hoping for more from Batuman's bright and witty adventurer of conscience. * Booklist (starred review) * Either/Or is an astute and very amusing read, packed with pin-sharp observations delivered in a deadpan style. * i * One of the most convincing fictional descriptions of overwhelming despair I have read... Batuman... [has] extraordinary control of the narrative voice. * London Review of Books * Effervescent . . . Observant, defiant, and newly on antidepressants, Selin approaches the mystery of human relations with a beginner's naivete and sharp intelligence . . . Batuman's light touch and humor are brought to bear on serious questions . . . As accomplished as The Idiot was, this improves upon it, and Batuman's already sharp chops as a novelist come across as even more refined in these pages. Readers will be enraptured. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * A brilliant meditation on womanhood and identity. By turns hilarious and illuminating. -- Irenosen Okojie What elevates this far above the typical campus novel is Ms. Batuman's wry perspective . . . Selin's observations are frequently hilarious, sometimes touching and always original . . . There's both a sweet innocence and a sophisticated meta aspect to all this, a level on which Either/Or is about how Selin (and her creator) came to create the very book we're reading . . . [A] charming, hyper-literary novel . . . To be continued, we hope. * Wall Street Journal * Batuman, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New Yorker writer, brings delicious detail and light irony to her heroine's quest. * Oprah Daily, "The 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2022" * Either/Or is driven by intellectual questions: it's a novel of ideas narrated by a protagonist who, even in her misery, is delightful company. -- Hannah Rosefield * Literary Review * Elif Batuman's debut novel, The Idiot, is one of the best works of fiction published in the 21st century. Her new novel, Either/Or, picks up where The Idiot left off. . . . Batuman has an extremely keen sense for what makes characters engaging and renders it all in supernaturally observant and funny prose. * AV Club, "The 15 most-anticipated books of 2022" *