Either/Or

Either/Or is a work of autofiction (autobiographical fiction) published by American author Elif Batuman in 2022. It is a sequel to her Pulitzer Prize–nominated novel The Idiot (2018) and a continuation of the story of Selin, The Idiot’s protagonist, as she makes her way through an undergraduate degree at Harvard College. Born in the United States to Turkish parents, Batuman earned a BA in literature from Harvard College and a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. In addition to her two novels, Batuman has also published a genre-bending collection of memoir-tinged essays and literary criticism entitled The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (2010). Batuman’s first two books take their titles from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s eponymous novels published in 1869 and 1871, respectively. Either/Or takes its title from Kierkegaard’s eponymous work published in 1843. Russian literature is an area of particular interest for Batuman, and her PhD dissertation includes analysis of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, both of which figure prominently within the narrative of Either/Or. In her memoir/essay collection, Batuman argues that the novel is about the struggle of the protagonist to transform their many “fragmented” lives into a narrative that is as coherent and meaningful as their favorite novels.