Click to receive personalized book recommendations daily.
Before you go...
Check Out These
21 Books You’ve Been Meaning to Read
See the List
Best Seller
The Possessed by Elif Batuman
Read An Excerpt

The Possessed

Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

By Elif Batuman
Read by Elif Batuman

By Elif Batuman
Read by Elif Batuman

Audiobook Download $20.00

Mar 14, 2017 | 572 Minutes

The Possessed by Elif Batuman
Audiobook Download
Mar 14, 2017 | 572 Minutes

Audio
–

Buy the Audiobook Download:

About The Possessed

One of The Economist‘s 2011 Books of the Year 


THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED―ABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!―TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS

No one who read Elif Batuman’s first article (in the journal n+1) 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 King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature.
Batuman’s subsequent pieces―for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the London Review of Books― have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva.
Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence―including her own.

Jacket Illustration © 2017 Roz Chast 

Read An Excerpt

Also by Elif Batuman

The Idiot
See all books by Elif Batuman

About Elif Batuman

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… More about Elif Batuman

Product Details

Category: Literary Collections | Literary Criticism | Audiobooks

Audiobook Download | $20.00
Published by Penguin Audio
Mar 14, 2017 | 572 Minutes | ISBN 9781524781583

Inspired by Your Browsing History

Also in Literary Collections

‹ ›
The Selected Works of Edward Said, 1966 - 2006
The Selected Works of Edward Said, 1966 – 2006
Edward W. Said
The Source of Self-Regard
The Source of Self-Regard
Toni Morrison
Richard Wright: The Library of America Unexpurgated Edition
Richard Wright: The Library of America Unexpurgated Edition
Richard Wright
Feel Free
Feel Free
Zadie Smith
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Yiyun Li
Fart Proudly
Fart Proudly
Benjamin Franklin
Black Is the Body
Black Is the Body
Emily Bernard
The Rub of Time
The Rub of Time
Martin Amis
I'm Not Here to Give a Speech
I’m Not Here to Give a Speech
Gabriel García Márquez
The Prisoner
The Prisoner
Marcel Proust
Four Huts
Four Huts
Burton Watson
Speeches of Note
Speeches of Note
Shaun Usher
Dance in America: A Reader's Anthology
Dance in America: A Reader’s Anthology
The April 3rd Incident
The April 3rd Incident
Yu Hua
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
The William H. Gass Reader
The William H. Gass Reader
William H. Gass
Lost Time
Lost Time
Jozef Czapski
Well-Read Black Girl
Well-Read Black Girl
Glory Edim
Selected Poems
Selected Poems
John Updike
The Long Path to Wisdom
The Long Path to Wisdom
Jan-Philipp Sendker, Jonathan Sendker and Lorie Karnath
Chroniques
Chroniques
Kamel Daoud
On Christmas
On Christmas
My Dearest Julia: The Wartime Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Wife
My Dearest Julia: The Wartime Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Wife
Ulysses S. Grant
The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin
The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North
The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North
The Cuban Club
The Cuban Club
Barry Gifford
What If This Were Enough?
What If This Were Enough?
Heather Havrilesky
The Conspiracy against the Human Race
The Conspiracy against the Human Race
Thomas Ligotti
In Search of Lost Books
In Search of Lost Books
Giorgio Van Straten
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Feminists Don't Wear Pink and Other Lies
Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies
Scarlett Curtis
United States: Essays 1952-1992
United States: Essays 1952-1992
Gore Vidal
Can We All Be Feminists?
Can We All Be Feminists?
The Beggar and Other Stories
The Beggar and Other Stories
Gaito Gazdanov
My Own Devices
My Own Devices
Dessa
To Obama
To Obama
Jeanne Marie Laskas
Daemon Voices
Daemon Voices
Philip Pullman
Essayism
Essayism
Brian Dillon
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
The Lost Art of Reading
The Lost Art of Reading
David L. Ulin
The Old Man and the Gun
The Old Man and the Gun
David Grann
Between Eternities
Between Eternities
Javier Marias
At Home
At Home
Gore Vidal
Homage to Daniel Shays
Homage to Daniel Shays
Gore Vidal
The Second American Revolution and Other Essays 1976 - 1982
The Second American Revolution and Other Essays 1976 – 1982
Gore Vidal
Looking for More Great Reads?
Download our Spring Fiction Sampler Now
Back to Top

Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network

Brightly

Raise kids who love to read
TASTE img

TASTE

An online magazine for today’s home cook

LitFlash

The eBooks you want at the lowest prices

Read it Forward

Read it first. Pass it on!
First to Read

First to Read

Early access to Penguin Random House’s hottest new titles