The Possessed

Starred review from November 2, 2009
Life imitates art—and even literary theory—in this scintillating collection of essays. Stanford lit prof Batuman (recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award) gleans clues to the conundrums of human existence by recalling scenes from her grad-student days in academe and exotic settings like Samarkand. A Tolstoy conference sparks her investigation into the possible murder, both physical and metaphysical, of the great man. She spends a summer in Samarkand reading impenetrable works in Old Uzbek as a window into Central Asia's enigmatic present. (Her baffled précis of one legend reads in part, “Bobur had an ignorant cousin, a soldier, who wasted all his time on revenge killings and on staging fights between chicken and sheep.”) The book climaxes in a Dostoyevskian psychodrama that swirls around a magnetic grad student in the comp-lit department. Batuman is a superb storyteller with an eye for absurdist detail. Her pieces unfold like beguiling shaggy dog tales that blithely track her own misadventures into colorful exegeses of the fiction and biographies of the masters: she's the rare writer who can make the concept of “mimetic desire” vivid and personal. If you've ever felt like you're living in a Russian novel—and who hasn't?—Batuman will show you why.

Starred review from November 15, 2009
In her first book, a picaresque memoir, Rona Jaffe Prize-winning essayist Batuman (literature, Stanford Univ.) takes the reader on a journey both literary and physical as she traces the evolution of her fascination with Russian literature across the globe and several centuries. Batuman writes in a voice that is frank, droll, and at times dryly hysterical. Her devoted, sometimes tangential study of Russian language and literature and the Dickensian cast of characters she meets in its pursuit will strike a chord with anyone who has been to graduate school and amuse even those who haven't. Footnoted translations of quotations in foreign languages would be helpful, but this is otherwise a wildly entertaining romp through academia and the Russian literary pantheon that does justice to a literature that is deservedly praised but underread. VERDICT Highly recommended for book lovers of all sorts, especially fans of Russian literature or metanonfiction such as Anne Fadiman's "Ex Libris" and Helene Hanff's "84, Charing Cross Road".Megan Hodge, Randolph-Macon Coll. Lib., Ashland, VA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2010
Can the practice of literary scholarship and the art of literary criticism generate true tales of hilarity, pathos, and revelation? Yes, if youre Batuman, a writer of extraordinary verve and acumen who braids together academic adventures, travelogues, biography, and autobiography to create scintillating essays. A self-described six-foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman who grew up in New Jersey, Batuman became enthralled by the great Russian writers, studied Russian, and, after some rough spots, embraced the study of literature as her life calling. Precision is Batumans path to both humor and intensity, whether shes writing about her fellow comparative-lit grad students at Stanford, magic library moments (such as discovering a link between Isaac Babel and King Kong), antic miscommunications at international literary conferences, a visit to St. Petersburgs ice palace, and, in several piquant installments, her strange summer in Samarkand, studying the Uzbek language and literature. Candid and reflective, mischievous and erudite, Batuman writes nimble and passionate essays celebrating the invaluable and pleasurable ways literature can increase the sum total of human understanding.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

April 24, 2017
In her debut memoir, originally published in 2010 and now available in the audio format, Batuman revisits her seven years as a grad student in Stanford’s comp lit program, where she focused on Russian novelists. Chapters on Babel, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and other great Russian writers alternate with chapters describing a summer the author spent studying Uzbek in Samarkand. Batuman’s narration, like her prose, is charming and self-deprecating, and she deftly navigates the book’s many Russian names and words. She’s an inexperienced audio narrator, but her naïve approach is perfect for the material. In between meditations on life, art, and graduate school, she relates amusing anecdotes about her subjects: listeners may be surprised to learn that Tolstoy was a skilled tennis player or that, during the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, Babel may have saved the life of downed American pilot Merian Caldwell Cooper, who went on to direct King Kong in 1933. Batuman’s wit and eye for absurdist detail come alive in this long-awaited audio edition. A Farrar, Straus & Giroux paperback.