Early on Selin contemplates writing a short story-featuring a courtyard with “a pink hotel, Albinoni, ashes, and being unable to leave.” That same paragraph continues, It features one year (age 18-19) in the life of a future writer. This is a tale of adolescence and a kind of Bildungsroman. Almost as if you could tackle Thomas Mann’s difficult text with an apple in one hand and a Scotch in the other. Late in the novel she casually picks up the monumental, and very dense Magic Mountain and goes at it in her spare time. Among the multitude of books she is mentioned to be reading or have read are Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary. Her quest for new words is insatiable.įurthermore, by the end of the action she appears to have read through practically the whole canon of Western literature. Over the course of the book she studies, as well, Russian and Hungarian.

At age eighteen, as she enters Harvard University, she already speaks English and Turkish fluently, has a passable knowledge of Spanish. Far from being an idiot, Selin-in this novel prominently featuring words and languages-is highly intelligent.

Apparently the title, borrowed from Dostoevsky, refers to the main character and narrator of the story, Selin Karadag (the g is silent), who is a young woman from New Jersey of Turkish background (like the author herself).

The Idiot (Penguin Press, 423 pages) is a debut novel by a young writer who promises to do big things in the future.

The idiot batuman review