Poets & Writers Theater

“I think a theme in both The Idiot and Either/Or is sort of a disappointment with philosophy.” Elif Batuman speaks about the themes in both her novels and the real-life inspiration behind her second novel, Either/Or (Penguin Press, 2022), in this conversation with author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro filmed at Pioneer Works in New York City.

“I think the books that I wish I’d written are all super personal books where the person manages to metabolize their personal experience into something more universal,” says Elif Batuman in this interview for The Graham Norton Book Club podcast about first books read, books to be jealous of, and books to recommend. A Q&A with Batuman by Porochista Khakpour is featured in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The main advice I would have is to be really easy on yourself, to shut off as much as you can the voice that’s saying maybe you’re wasting your time, and maybe everything that you do is stupid.” Elif Batuman, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for her debut novel, The Idiot (Penguin Press, 2017), talks to Granta about the literary model of Charles M. Schulz’s Snoopy and the blurred boundary between fiction and nonfiction.

“It was like the story of your relations with others...was constantly being recorded and updated, and you could check it at any time.” Elif Batuman reads from her debut novel, The Idiot (Penguin Press, 2017), a semifinalist for the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction, at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.