[Photo provided to China Daily]

The Idiot

The Idiot, Elif Batuman's well-written first novel, is a wry, funny, coming-of-age story set at the dawn of email among a group of Harvard brainiacs too nerdy and self-involved to even think about common pastimes of college students. Heroine Selin Karadag, wise daughter of Turkish immigrants, is shopping for classes and getting to know her overachieving roommates. She then falls in love with a guy named Ivan in her Russian-language class. The novel brims with provocative ideas about language, literature and culture. The title itself pays homage to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's namesake novel, whose main character, like Selin, is so good and noble he might be mistaken for an idiot.