This September, the Vox Book Club is reading Elif Batuman’s The Idiot

This fall’s back-to-school season is going to look very strange. But one of the things books are good at is giving us a semblance of normalcy in strange times, and — if they’re really good books — poking a little at what we all thought was normal to begin with. That’s why this September, the Vox Book Club is reading The Idiot by Elif Batuman.

The Idiot was one of my favorite novels of 2017, a weird and funny and tender book about communication and semiotics and how absolutely bizarre language is. It’s a campus novel set at Harvard in 1995, during the cultural moment when email was just becoming a thing. Freshman student Selin is struggling to figure out how to perform as the kind of person Harvard freshmen are supposed to be: She has to consciously remember to pretend she can’t resist chocolate, and when her roommate tells her to buy an Einstein poster, instead of buying the one where Einstein’s sticking out his tongue, she buys just a portrait of Einstein, so everyone thinks she stans for him and keeps explaining his flaws to her the whole year. One day, Selin strikes up an email correspondence with a boy she’s barely spoken to, and their relationship begins to develop in strange and unexpected ways.

This one’s a real language nerd book, and it’s going to be incredibly fun to talk about. We can get into semiotics! We can discuss how incredibly weird a lot of the stuff we are all taught is normal actually is! Subscribe to our newsletter to make sure you don’t miss anything, and let’s get started.

Friday, September 11: First discussion post on The Idiot

Friday, September 25: Second discussion post on The Idiot

Wednesday, September 30: Virtual live event, with details to come

New goal: 25,000

In the spring, we launched a program asking readers for financial contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone, and last week, we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors. Well, you helped us blow past that. Today, we are extending that goal to 25,000. Millions turn to Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — from what is happening with the USPS to the coronavirus crisis to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. Contribute today from as little as $3.