The Idiot cover art

The Idiot

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Idiot

By: Elif Batuman
Narrated by: Elif Batuman
Try Premium Plus free

Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $26.99

Buy Now for $26.99

About this listen

It is September 1995. Selin, a Turkish-American college freshman from New Jersey, is about to embark on her first year at Harvard University, where she is determined to decipher the mysteries of language and to become a writer. In between studying psycho­linguistics and the philosophy of language, teaching ESL to a Costa Rican plumber, and befriending her classmate Svetlana (a Serbian refugee from Connecticut), Selin falls in love with a Hungarian maths student in her Russian class. She spends the summer in the Hungarian countryside teaching English to village children, where sad and comic misunderstandings ensue. Full of the razor-sharp evocations of character and place that have long delighted listeners, The Idiot tackles literary ambition, female friend­ship, the American dream, Chomskian linguistics, the Russian novel and romantic love.

©2017 Elif Batuman (P)2017 Audible, Ltd Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
All stars
Most relevant
It was a hard read but worth sticking with. it's a good book which took some effort to finish.

how clever the main character was but also very awkward.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The reading of this was painful! So slow and disengaging. It was by far the worst audio book I have heard.

The book was pretty slow and hard to keep engaged. There were partial funny moments, but definitely wasn’t conveyed by the performance. The plot wasn’t great and didn’t leave me wanting more.

Terrible performance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.