A review by ergative
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman

4.0

I don't usually go for memoirs, but this literary memoirs of Batuman's education with Russian novels is really lovely. She has a real talent for connecting entertaining anecdotes about college and grad school with corresponding discussions of related literature. The three chapters on her summer in Samarkand are wonderful -- somehow de-exotifying the post-soviet Uzbekistan, while also opening up new worlds into a literary history of a country that English speakers will probably never know, because no one translates Uzbek classics into English -- and in describing these literary artifacts, she re-exotifies the country (to a Western reader like me, at least), making it strange and wonderful and enticing again. And I loved the chapter about the Tolstoy conference, which rang very true to life of academic conferences. Really, if you like classic Russian literature, this is a great book; or if you have been to grad school, this is a great book; and even if neither of those things are true, give it a try! Batuman has such an engaging, charming voice, and the structural connections between each book or author, and the events she relates alongside her discussion of them, is very skilled.