Vintage Digital

Discover TikTok's new favourite book.

'I loved it and could have read a thousand more pages of it' Emma Cline, author of The Girls

Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard with no idea what to expect. What she doesn't expect is:

- How much time she will spend thinking about language and its limitations
- An opinionated cosmopolitan Serb named Svetlana, who will become her confidante
- A mathematician from Hungary called Ivan, whom she will obsess over when she is supposed to be studying
- Feeling dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood

But most of all, Selin does not expect to embark on a study of precisely how baffling love can be when you are trying to forge a self...
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PRAISE FOR THE IDIOT:
'A moving, continent-hopping coming-of-age story' Observer
'Elif Batuman surely has one of the best senses of humour...refreshing and unique' Sheila Heti
'Full of zingy one-liners' Financial Times
'Hilarious, brilliant observations about writing, life and crushes' Curtis Sittenfeld
'Delightful and slyly funny' Red

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2003

In The Master of Petersburg J. M. Coetzee dares to imagine the life of Dostoevsky. Set in 1869, when Dostoevsky was summoned from Germany to St Petersburg by the sudden death of his stepson, this novel is at once a compelling mystery steeped in the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Russia and a brilliant and courageous meditation on authority and rebellion, art and imagination. Dostoevsky is seen obsessively following his stepson's ghost, trying to ascertain whether he was a suicide or a murder victim and whether he loved or despised his stepfather.

'Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them'

This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are also no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christopher decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery story becomes more complicated than he could have ever predicted.

BACKSTORY: Meet the author and learn about the background to Christopher's story.