Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard and finds herself dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood. She studies linguistics and literature, and spends a lot of time thinking about what language – and languages – can and cannot do. Along the way she befriends Svetlana, a cosmopolitan Serb, and obsesses ove...
Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard and finds herself dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood. She studies linguistics and literature, and spends a lot of time thinking about what language – and languages – can and cannot do. Along the way she befriends Svetlana, a cosmopolitan Serb, and obsesses over Ivan, a mathematician from Hungary.
Selin ponders profound questions about how culture and language shape who we are, how difficult it is to be a failed writer, and how baffling love is. At once clever and clueless, Batuman’s heroine shows us with perfect hilarity and soulful inquisitiveness just how messy it can be to forge a self.
作者简介
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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.
原文摘录
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I found myself remembering the day in kindergarten when the teachers showed us *Dumbo*: a Disney movie about a puny, weird-looking circus elephant that everyone made fun of. As the story unfolded, I realized to my amazement that all the kids in the class, even the bullies, the ones who despised and tormented the weak and the ugly, were rooting against Dumbo’s tormentors. Over and over they laughed and cheered, both when Dumbo succeeded and when bad things happened to the bullies. But they’re you, I thought to myself. How did they not know? They didn’t know. It was astounding, an astounding truth. *Everyone thought they were Dumbo*. (查看原文)
I said bye first, to be brave. I still thought bravery would be somehow rewarded." 一本完全没有想到自己会喜欢的书：絮絮叨叨，自传色彩明显，设定在Harvard——然而却一再从中看到一些逝去的片段，简直让人羞赧。 看完之后才意识到，其实阅读过程中一直在悬心期待一个ha...
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It kind of fell down when I went to the end, about Sonya’s journey in the Hungarian countryside. Nevertheless, it’s still a refreshing novel, and you hardly get tired of it. Some of Sonya’s feelings towards Ivan struck me with great resemblance. She seem...
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翕如
Penguin Press2017版
己注销
Penguin Press2017版
落落
Penguin Press2017版
还没人写过短评呢