Booklist

The Either/Or Syllabus

Selected by the Bookshop


Elif Batuman’s Either/Or follows The Idiot’s Selin into her second year at Harvard. Here, we’ve recreated her 1996 literature syllabus – the books that help guide her to many dubious conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex – all of which are discussed in detail in our brilliant podcast discussion between Batuman and Merve Emre. Listen to the podcast here.

From the publisher:
The new novel from the bestselling author of The Idiot follows one young woman's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood.'Elif Batuman is the queen of the campus novel...…

From the publisher:
'I loved it and could have read a thousand more pages of it' Emma Cline, author of The Girls**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018** Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard with no…

From the publisher:
In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters - the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section - Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating…

From the publisher:
Translated by Vladimir NabokovWhen Vladimir Nabokov’s translation of Pushkin’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin was first published in 1964, it ignited a storm of controversy that famously resulted in the demise of…

From the publisher:
NADJA is a Surrealist romance, and has come to be known as a book which defined that movement's attitude towards life. With its blend of intimate confession and sense of the marvellous, NADJA weaves a myterious and compelling tapestry of…

From the publisher:
Presented as a collection of confessional letters written by the eponymous protagonist, The Sorrows of Young Werther charts the emotional journey of a young man who, during a stay in a picturesque German village, falls in love with Lotte, a…

From the publisher:
Translated by Ronald WilksThe Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories 1896-1904 is an enchanting collection of tales which showcase Anton Chekhov at the height of his power as a writer. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by…

From the publisher:
Regarded by many as Henry James's finest work, and a lucid tragedy exploring the distance between money and happiness, The Portrait of a Lady contains an introduction by Philip Horne in Penguin Classics.When Isabel Archer, a beautiful,…

From the publisher:
The Essential Essays gathers twenty-five of Adrienne Rich's most renowned essays, demonstrating the lasting brilliance of her voice and her prophetic vision. Her thoughts on feminism, poetry, race, homosexuality and identity are still…

From the publisher:
In This Sex Which Is Not One, Luce Irigaray elaborates on some of the major themes of Speculum of the Other Woman, her landmark work on the status of woman in Western philosophical discourse and in psychoanalytic theory, In eleven acute and…

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