“They couldn’t figure out exactly where the book fit. Part literary criticism, part travel writing, part memoir, Batuman’s collection of seven nonfiction pieces moves from the campus of Stanford University to Uzbekistan, contemplating everything from Isaac Babel to an overweight mathematician in Florence who confides in an e-mail to Batuman: “I haven’t had sex with a woman…. Also I haven’t done laundry in almost a month and all my underwear is dirty.” But, somehow, it all ties in with Russian literature.”
Thanks to The Elegant Variation, I know one book I will be reading in 2010.
