He thought they were meaningful concepts, and that it really mattered which one you were from and which ones you visited.” He focuses on the spread of culture he observes when he visits different countries. Ivan too finds interest in foreign places: “e just cared about countries. Selin even pays attention to where mittens and shoes were manufactured when she goes shopping-Central America and Poland. Her best friend, Svetlana, is Serbian, and her love interest, Ivan, is Hungarian. Selin, the protagonist, is born and raised in New Jersey and is Turkish. The novel successfully offers a meaningful reflection on culture, love, and personality through humorous quips, character building, and chronological structure.īatuman emphasizes people’s and objects’ places of origin to bring attention to the importance of culture to the main characters. In her second novel, “The Idiot,” Elif Batuman ‘99 explores freshman Selin Karadag’s experience during her first year at Harvard. But some things-traditions like Housing Day, for example-have not changed at all. Email had just became a consistently used medium of communication, cellphones barely existed, and college courses were different.
Harvard in 1995 looked a little different from Harvard today.
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