Elif Batuman’s first novel, The Idiot, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and for the Women’s Prize. The sequel, Either/Or, was published in 2022. She is also the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them. She has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010, and holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford. Her newsletter is called The Elif Life.