Either/Or

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

SELIN IS THE LUCKIEST PERSON IN HER FAMILY: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's her second year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin's elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan's weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, her life feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy, abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel-a life worthy of becoming a novel-without becoming a crazy, abandoned woman oneself?

Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice-no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.

Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either / Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.

© Elif Batuman 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

Our funniest overthinker - and the queen of the campus novel... Selin is a droll and disarming narrator, and takes her place as one of the finest hapless scholars in the literary canon.
Sunday Times
Batuman has a gift for making the universe seem, somehow, like the benevolent and witty literary seminar you wish it were . . . This novel wins you over in a million micro-observations.
The New York Times
A richly suggestive and amusing book.
Financial Times
Such an enchanting writer.
Sunday Times
Either/Or is both an entertaining campus novel and an engaging disquisition on the very nature and purpose of novels.
Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*
Stupendous . . . hilarious... Batuman is a genius, rendering human folly at its most colorful and borderline surreal
Vogue
The central pleasure of reading Elif Batuman's ferociously intelligent fiction...[is] the thrill of encountering things you already half-knew, rendered in language with lyrical precision... hopefully, there will be a third installment of the adventures of Elif Batuman's brilliantly modern picaro.
Times Literary Supplement
Wonderfully idiosyncratic... Charming
Guardian
Delightful... Batuman has a formidable deadpan wit... Selin is not only an astute observer but displays a touching capacity for awe.
Spectator
A charming, mordantly funny follow-up to her first novel... triumphal.
Daily Mail

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