Elif Batuman is a writer that I had picked up on in the London Review of Books. I had seen she was giving a talk at the British Museum - Cervantes, Balzac and double–entry book–keeping, the title of the talk caught my imagination. She has written The Possessed which I have just read in paperback. Ian Sansom gives a whiff of it in the Guardian review link. The book reads like a short ride through Russian Literature in a fast machine - see John Adams for rest and relaxation.
Her wit limbo dances under the academic bar. On p57 in the paperback version she reports being accused by a colleague at a seminar of not fully understanding Lyutov's ( a character in Bable's Red Cavalry) "specifically Jewish alienation."
Her reply -
Right ... As a six foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman growing up in New Jersey, I cannot possibly know as much about alienation as you, a short American Jew.It may show irony in the soul but it is lost on her colleague who nods and replies -
So you see the problem.There are nightmares about penguins as homestay hosts, ice-houses for connubial blisters, inspirations for conspiracies and attempts on Tolstoy's life. Do keep up there at the back.
