Batuman is great, I first read her a long time back, her essay about suspecting Tolstoy was poisoned, in Harper’s in 2009. I’d lost track of her writing, but now I’m going to order and await The Idiot.

By the way, what about that other Elif, Shafak? (Three daughters of eve is only a third of what it claims to be, but bastard of istanbul is powerful.) And birds without wings? And sultan of Byzantium by selçuk altun?