Elif Batuman’sdeep engagement with Russian literature, culture, and language, detailed in her acclaimed memoir The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, where she humorously explores her academic journey and love for Russian classics like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, often juxtaposing grand literature with absurd reality, and more recently writing on how to approach Russian works amidst current political contexts. 

One kindness that Springsteen has afforded his body is more days off, leaving time for his family, for exercise, for listening to music, watching movies, reading. Lately, he has been consumed with Russian fiction. “It’s compensatory-what you missed the first time around,” he said. “I’m sixty-some, and I think, There are a lot of these Russian guys! What’s all the fuss about? So I was just curious. That was an incredible book: The Brothers Karamazov. Then I read The Gambler. The social play in the first half was less interesting to me, but the second half, about obsession, was fun. That could speak to me. I was a big John Cheever fan, and so when I got into Chekhov I could see where Cheever was coming from.