Either/Or

Either/Or
Elif Batuman
RRP:
NZ$ 37.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 29.60
Trade Paperback
h234 x 153mm - 368pg
26 May 2022 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781787333871
Out Of Stock
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9781787333864 UK Hardback $38.40

A pitch perfect encapsulation of one young woman' s quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthoodIn 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.
[A] charming, smart and completely idiosyncratic take on art, life and the gap between. -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail, *Books to Look Out For 2022* * In 2018, Elif Batuman' s witty campus novel, The Idiot, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. . . . Now, Batuman returns with a sequel, Either/Or, that picks up during Selin' s just-as-messy sophomore year. Expect a master course in snappy social observation. * TIME, ' The 21 Most Anticipated Books of 2022' * Selin, the magnetic protagonist in Batuman' s brilliant and comedic first novel, The Idiot (2017), returns . . . Month by month, Batuman' s brainy, attentive, outspoken narrator grapples with the absurd (literary pretension, academics, sex) and the sublime (literature, music, sex) . . . Through it all, valiant 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) * Selin is a disarming narrator, tossing off insights that are revelatory, moving, and laugh-out-loud funny-sometimes all at once-and it' s exciting to watch her become the author of her own story. Another delightfully cerebral and bighearted novel from a distinctive voice in contemporary fiction. * Kirkus (starred review) * 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) *
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.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781787333871
Published: 26 May 2022
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Jonathan Cape
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Format: Trade Paperback
Height: 234mm
Width: 153mm
Spine: 30mm
Weight: 350g
Pages: 368

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