The Idiot (Batuman novel)


The Idiot is a semi-autobiographical 2017 novel by Turkish American writer Elif Batuman. It is a bildungsroman, and concerns a college freshman, Selin, attending Harvard University in the 1990s.

Plot

Selin Karadağ is a freshman studying linguistics at Harvard University. She meets an older Hungarian mathematics student, Ivan, in a Russian language class and the two begin corresponding over email, and occasionally spend time together in person. While Selin and Ivan at times seem interested in each other romantically, neither know how and when to express their feelings. The summer after her freshman year, Selin travels to Paris with her college friend Svetlana, and then to Hungary to teach English in a remote village, a job she accepts partly to be closer to Ivan. At the end of the summer, Selin returns to Harvard and Ivan goes to California to pursue graduate mathematics.

Reception

The Idiot was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction.
According to literary review aggregator LitHub, the novel received mostly positive reviews.