In this month’s edition of BBC World Book Club bestselling American writer Elif Batuman discusses her acclaimed debut novel. ‘The Idiot’ follows Selin, a Turkish-American fresher at Harvard in the mid-1990s, delving into her experiences as she navigates the challenges of university life, grappling with identity, language, and the complexities of relationships, romantic and otherwise. Selin becomes infatuated with Ivan, an older Hungarian mathematics student, and their relationship unfolds primarily through a series of cryptic emails, highlighting the difficulties of virtual communication across cultures. As Selin travels to Europe for a summer teaching job, she continues to struggle with her sense of self, her obsession with Ivan, and the meaning of her experiences. The novel captures the disorienting, often absurd nature of early adulthood, where intellectual exploration meets the messiness of real life and its chaotic emotions. Infused with dry humour and philosophical musings, The Idiot is at heart a playful meditation on the limitation of language, and the gap between theoretical knowledge and lived experience.
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Hello, this is the BBC World Service.
I'm Harriet Gilbert.
Welcome to World Book Club, the program where you get to ask top authors questions about their work.
The book we've been reading this month is a novel called the Idiot, the very funny account of a young woman's first year at Harvard University, where it dawns on her that she knows almost nothing about anything from whether someone's flirting with her to what on earth is the point of beer?
And joining us to answer questions about the Idiot from BBC listeners around the world is its award winning American author, Elif Batuman.
Elif, welcome to World Book Club.
I'm thrilled to be here.
I just hope you don't ask me what is the point of beer?
Because I still don't know.
Well, I share your puzzlement about that.
Anyway, back to books.
Elif has written three first, a collection of interconnected essays about Russian literature, then two novels, of which the most recent is called either Or.
The Idiot, the novel we're talking about today, which since its publication in 2017 has been translated into 18 languages, is in effect a prequel to either Or.