Roaming from Tashkent to San Francisco, this is the true story of one budding writer's strange encounters with the fanatics who are devoted - absurdly! melancholically! ecstatically! - to the Russian classics. Combining fresh readings of the great Russians from Gogol to Goncharov with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence, The Possessed introduces a brilliant and distinctive new voice: comic, humane, charming, poignant and completely, and unpretentiously, full of an infectious love for literature.

ELIF BATUMAN was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard, and received her doctorate in comparative literature from Stanford University. She is currently the writer-in-residence at Koc University, Istanbul. Her writing has been published in the New Yorker, n+1, Harper's and the Guardian, and she has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. This is her first book.