Hardboard binding. Brown and yellow cover with yellow title.

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•          Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list

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 now lives in Twin Peaks, San Francisco (near the radio tower). Her writing has been published in the New Yorker, n+1, Harper’s, LRB and the Guardian. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. This is her first book.

Elif Batuman has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2010. She is the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor, she also holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University.

Elif Bauman is an American academic, from a Turkish family, who asks how she ended up spending seven years in California studying the Russian novel? In this book she talks about conferences she attended; such as one on Babel in California and another in Tolstoy’s ancestral home. Also the time she spent in Samarkand learning Uzbek, as well as other Russian visits and many other Russian authors. Actually though, what the book is about is her love affair with Russian literature and, as someone who shares her love for all things Russian, it is a joy to read. I adore books about books and Elif Bauman writes so well, with such humour and passion, that the book has become one of my favourites immediately and Bauman an author I hope I will hear (and read) much from. Although a series of essays, Bauman has endless humorous stories to tell and she weaves her tales into those about the authors and books she loves, meandering delightfully off the point and having a wonderful sense of humour about all that befalls her on her travels. If you have an interest in Russia and a love of literature, then this book is for you. As for her original question about how she spent so long studying the Russian novel? Well, all I can say is that I am glad she did and I look forward to more from this extremely talented writer. An absolute joy and pleasure to read and I also learnt a lot. Highly recommended.

NOTE: This is an original  book from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. Note: Jack founded the Michelin Guide ‘Midsummer House’- Cambridge’s paramount restaurant. This dining experience is hidden amongst the grassy pastures and grazing cattle of Midsummer Common and perched on the banks of the River Cam. 

In 2008, Jack was one of the co-founders of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, alongside other members of the Department, and acted as the Foundation’s Chair. The project’s original goals were modest: to build and distribute low-cost computers for prospective applicants to our Computer Science degree. Initially the project was a “success disaster”, as Jack would say, as demand far outstripped the low-scale manufacturing plans. Ultimately the Raspberry Pi became the UK’s most successful computer with more than 60 million sold to date. Jack was drawn to the educational possibilities of the Raspberry Pi, its potential uses in emerging economies and the way it could support self-directed learning.