Critical Praise

"Batuman writes with superb wit... There’s something melancholy, as well as beautiful, in using literature not just to illuminate experience but actually to create it. Batuman’s writing waltzes in a space in which books and life reflect each other... If Susan Sontag had coupled with Buster Keaton, their prodigiously gifted love child might have written this book."

—Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"It’s not often that one laughs out loud while reading a book of literary criticism. In seven delightfully quirky essays that combine travelogue and memoir with criticism, Elif Batuman’s The Possessed takes us on an unconventional odyssey through the world of Russian literature... Part sleuth, part pundit, Batuman both plays the game of literary exegesis and skewers it."

—Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor

"A rare gem: a genuine affirmation of deep reading --- of caring about ideas and about being carried off by them --- from an exceptional writer who’s not yet even 35."

—Jonathan Kiefer, SF Weekly

"Hilarious, wide-ranging, erudite and memorable, The Possessed is a sui generis feast for the mind and the fancy, ants and all."

—The New York Times