Download or read book The Idiot written by Elif Batuman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction • Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction “Easily the funniest book I’ve read this year.” —GQ “Masterly funny debut novel . . . Erudite but never pretentious, The Idiot will make you crave more books by Batuman.” —Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail. Named one the best books of the year by Refinery29 • Mashable One • Elle Magazine • The New York Times • Bookpage • Vogue • NPR • Buzzfeed •The Millions

Download or read book Idiot written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2006-11 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally written in Russian language, The Idiot is a unique masterpiece. Dostoevsky has depicted a good man, Prince Myshkin, who is trapped in the cruel and wild Petersburg society that is obsessed with avarice, power and manipulation. It is a story of conflicting emotions of love and hatred, friendship and hostility etc. Appealing!...

Download or read book The Idiot written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and published by Alma Classics. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Marketing Blurb

Download or read book The Village Idiot written by Steve Stern and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022 "A frothy picaresque that ... vibrates to the “sweet celestial confusion” of Soutine’s painting: delirious and earthy, reverent and irreligious." -- The New York Times Book Review A wild, effervescent, absinthe-soaked novel that tells of the life of the extraordinary artist Chaim Soutine Steve Stern’s astonishing new novel The Village Idiot begins on a glorious spring day in Paris 1917. Amid the carnage of World War I, some of the foremost artists of the age have chosen to stage a boat race. At the head of the regatta is Amedeo Modigliani, seated regally in a bathtub pulled by a flock of canvasback ducks. But unbeknownst to the competition, he has a secret advantage: his young friend, the immigrant painter Chaim Soutine, is hauling the tub from underwater. Soutine, an unwashed, misfit artist (who incidentally can’t swim) has been persuaded by the Italian to don a ponderous diving suit and trudge along the floor of the river Seine. Disoriented and confused by the artificial air in his helmet Chaim stumbles through the events of his past and future life. It’s quite an extraordinary life. From his impoverished beginnings in an East European shtetl to his equally destitute days in Paris during the Années Folles, the Crazy Years, from the Cinderella patronage of the American collector Albert Barnes, who raises him from poverty to international attention, to his perilous flight from the Nazi occupation of France, Chaim Soutine remains driven by his unrelenting passion to paint. To be sure, there are notable distractions, such as his unlikely friendship with Modigliani, who drags him from brothels to midnight felonies to a duel at dawn; there are the romances with remarkable women who compete with and sometimes salvage his obsession. But there is also, always on the horizon, the coming storm that threatens to sweep away Chaim and a generation of gifted Jewish refugees from a tradition that would outlaw their longing to make art. Wildly inventive, as funny as it is heart-breaking, The Village Idiot is a luminous fever-dream of a novel, steeped in the heady atmosphere of a Paris that was the cultural capital of the universe, a place where anything seemed possible.

Download or read book The Notebooks for The Idiot written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique document of the Russian author's creative process is illustrated by facsimiles of original pages from his notebooks, which reveal at least eight plans for the story, each with numerous variations.

Download or read book Idiot written by Laura Clery and published by Gallery Books. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From nationally bestselling author, YouTube star, and Facebook Video sensation Laura Clery comes a collection of comedic essays that paint “an honest, complicated portrait of how your life can change” (SheKnows). Laura Clery makes a living by sharing inappropriate comedy sketches with millions of strangers on the internet. She writes songs about her anatomy, talks trash about her one-eyed rescue pug, and sexually harasses her husband, Stephen. And it pays the bills! Now, in her first-ever book, Laura recounts how she went from being a dangerously impulsive, broke, unemployable, suicidal, cocaine-addicted narcissist, crippled by fear and hopping from one toxic romance to the next…to a more-happy-than-not, somewhat rational, meditating, vegan yogi with good credit, a great marriage, a fantastic career, and four unfortunate-looking rescue animals. Still, above all, Laura remains an amazingly talented, adorable, and vulnerable, self-described…Idiot. With her signature brand of offbeat, no-holds-barred humor, Idiot introduces you to a wildly original—and undeniably relatable—new voice.

Download or read book The Brothers K written by David James Duncan and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2010-07-28 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story both striking and in its originality and poignant in its universality. This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger, regret, and love in the lives of the Chance family. A father whose dreams of glory on a baseball field are shattered by a mill accident. A mother who clings obsessively to religion as a ward against the darkest hour of her past. Four brothers who come of age during the seismic upheavals of the sixties and who each choose their own way to deal with what the world has become. By turns uproariously funny and deeply moving, and beautifully written throughout, The Brothers K is one of the finest chronicles of our lives in many years. Praise for The Brothers K “The pages of The Brothers K sparkle.”—The New York Times Book Review “Duncan is a wonderfully engaging writer.”—Los Angeles Times “This ambitious book succeeds on almost every level and every page.”—USA Today “Duncan’s prose is a blend of lyrical rhapsody, sassy hyperbole and all-American vernacular.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The Brothers K affords the . . . deep pleasures of novels that exhaustively create, and alter, complex worlds. . . . One always senses an enthusiastic and abundantly talented and versatile writer at work.”—The Washington Post Book World “Duncan . . . tells the larger story of an entire popular culture struggling to redefine itself—something he does with the comic excitement and depth of feeling one expects from Tom Robbins.”—Chicago Tribune

Download or read book Dostoevsky s The Idiot written by Liza Knapp and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is designed to guide readers through Dostoevsky's The Idiot, first published in 1869 and generally considered to be his most mysterious and confusing work.

Download or read book The Possessed written by Elif Batuman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2010-02-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED—ABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!—TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS No one who read Elif Batuman's first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. "Babel in California" told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel's last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel's secret influence on the making of King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature. Batuman's subsequent pieces—for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the London Review of Books— have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin's wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva. Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence—including her own.

Download or read book Demons written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and published by Aegitas. This book was released on 2018-12-01 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demons is an anti-nihilistic novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is the third of the four great novels written by Dostoyevsky after his return from Siberian exile, the others being Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Demons is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy.

Download or read book The Kitchen Boy written by Robert Alexander and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-01-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon to be a major motion picture starring Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient), directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters) Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia, Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinating story of the final days of Nicholas and Alexandra Romanov as seen through the eyes of their young kitchen boy, Leonka. Now an ancient Russian immigrant, Leonka claims to be the last living witness to the Romanovs’ brutal murders and sets down the dark secrets of his past with the imperial family. Does he hold the key to the many questions surrounding the family’s murder? Historically vivid and compelling, The Kitchen Boy is also a touching portrait of a loving family that was in many ways similar, yet so different, from any other. "Ingenious...Keeps readers guessing through the final pages." —USA Today

Download or read book Open Veins of Latin America written by Eduardo Galeano and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [In this book, the author's] analysis of the effects and causes of capitalist underdevelopment in Latin America present [an] account of ... Latin American history. [The author] shows how foreign companies reaped huge profits through their operations in Latin America. He explains the politics of the Latin American bourgeoisies and their subservience to foreign powers, and how they interacted to create increasingly unequal capitalist societies in Latin America.-Back cover.

Download or read book Ticknor written by Sheila Heti and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2006-04-04 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A small masterpiece" (National Post)-An utterly original first novel from a rising international star On a cold, rainy night, an aging bachelor named George Ticknor prepares to visit his childhood friend Prescott, now one of the leading intellectual lights of their generation. Reviewing a life of petty humiliations, and his friend's brilliant career, Ticknor sets out for the dinner party-a party at which he'd just as soon never arrive. Distantly inspired by the real-life friendship between the great historian William Hickling Prescott and his biographer, Ticknor is a witty, fantastical study in resentment. It recalls such modern masterpieces of obsession as Thomas Bernhard's The Loser and Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine and announces the arrival of a charming and original novelist, one whose stories have already earned her a passionate international following. "A perceptive act of ventriloquism, [Ticknor] rewards thought and rereading, and offers a finely cadenced voice, intelligence and . . . moody beauty." -Catherine Bush, The Globe and Mail "Confoundedly strange [and] fascinating." -Nicholas Dinka, Quill & Quire

Download or read book The Idiot Gods written by David Zindell and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quite simply the best book about a whale since Moby Dick. The Idiot Gods is an epic tale of a quest for a new way of life on earth, told by an orca. David Zindell returns to the grand themes of Neverness in this uniquely moving book.

Download or read book It Chooses You written by Miranda July and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2011-11-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the "PennySaver," the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the "Large leather Jacket, $10"? It seemed important to find out--or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of "PennySaver" sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways. Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July's off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world.

Download or read book The Idiot written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing Dostoevsky's acute artistic sense and penetrating psychological insight, this new translation is meticulously faithful to the original.

Download or read book Three Novellas written by Leo Tolstoy and published by Alma Classics. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Tolstoy's last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny's irrepressible lust for Stepanida, a sensual peasant woman. Even when he gets married to a respectable upper-class lady, he finds himself unable to put an end to his encounters with Stepanida, and becomes increasingly consumed by guilt and helplessness in the face of his urges. Also included in this volume is Family Happiness, one of Tolstoy's earliest works, an entertaining and cynical account of marriage from the perspective of a disillusioned wife, and A Landowner's Morning.