Introduction
Elif Batuman (born in 1977) is an American author, academic, and journalist.
Early life
Elif Batuman was born in New York City to Turkish parents, and grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard College, and received her doctorate in comparative literature from Stanford University. While in graduate school, Batuman studied the Uzbek language in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Her dissertation, The Windmill and the Giant: Double-Entry Bookkeeping in the Novel, is about the process of social research and solitary construction undertaken by novelists.
Career
In February, 2010, she published her first book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, based on material she previously published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and n+1, which details her experiences as a graduate student. Her writing has been described as "almost helplessly epigrammatical."
Batuman was writer-in-residence at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey
from 2010 to 2013. Now she lives in New York.
Works
Books
- The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. Macmillan. 2010. ISBN 978-0-374-53218-5.
Contributions
- Two Rivers. Carolyn Drake, self-published, 2013. ISBN 978-0-615-78764-0. Edition of 700 copies. By Carolyn Drake. Accompanied by a separate book with a short essay by Batuman and notes by Drake.
Essays
- "The Murder of Leo Tolstoy". Harper's. February 2009.
- "The Big Dig". The New Yorker. 31 August 2015.
- "The head scarf, modern Turkey, and me". The New Yorker. 8–15 February 2016.
Awards
- Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, 2007.
- Whiting Award, 2010.