The Idiot cover art

The Idiot

Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of 900K+ titles.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto-renews for $8.99/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Idiot

Written by: Elif Batuman
Narrated by: Elif Batuman
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $25.38

Buy Now for $25.38

About this listen

It is September 1995. Selin, a Turkish-American college freshman from New Jersey, is about to embark on her first year at Harvard University, where she is determined to decipher the mysteries of language and to become a writer. In between studying psycho­linguistics and the philosophy of language, teaching ESL to a Costa Rican plumber, and befriending her classmate Svetlana (a Serbian refugee from Connecticut), Selin falls in love with a Hungarian maths student in her Russian class. She spends the summer in the Hungarian countryside teaching English to village children, where sad and comic misunderstandings ensue. Full of the razor-sharp evocations of character and place that have long delighted listeners, The Idiot tackles literary ambition, female friend­ship, the American dream, Chomskian linguistics, the Russian novel and romantic love.

©2017 Elif Batuman (P)2017 Audible, Ltd
Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Continue the series

Either/Or cover art
Either/Or Written by: Elif Batuman
No reviews yet