The Possessed
Elif Batuman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
<p> <p><p>One of <I>The Economist</I>'s 2011 Books of the Year <p><p>THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED&#8212;ABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!&#8212;TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS<BR><p>No one who read Elif Batuman's first article (in the journal <I>n+1</I>) will ever forget it. "Babel in California" told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel's last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel's secret influence on the making of <I>King Kong</I>, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature. <BR><BR>Batuman's subsequent pieces&#8212;for <I>The New Yorker</I>, <I>Harper's Magazine</I>, and the <I>London Review of Books</I>&#8212; have made her one of the most...</BR></BR></p></BR></p></p></p></p></p>