Why shouldn't the author of the possessed, an ode to Russian literature, name her debut

novel after another dusty-ev scheme masterpiece?

Elif Batiman will be here to talk about her new book, The Idiot.

When I looked back at the book that became the idiot, it was so much written about the

end of the Iron Curtain and the idea of the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of

a new kind of unmarked time that now seems very foreign.

What makes Victor Hugo's Les Miserables the novel of this century?

David Bellows will join us to talk about his book on Hugo's masterpiece.

Les Miserables does speak to us now, especially if you understand something about the 19th

century background, then you can see what it still has to say to us.

Alexander Altair will give us an update from the literary world.

Plus we'll talk about what we and the wider world are reading.

This is Inside the New York Times Book Review.

I'm Pamela Paul.

David Bellows joins us now.

He is the author of The Novel of the Century, the extraordinary adventure of Les Miserables.

David, thank you for being here.

I'm glad to be with you, Pamela.

So listeners of this podcast will know how obsessed I've been with Les Miserables.

And clearly this is a novel that you were taken with as well.

Why did you decide to write a book about it?

Well, actually, originally, so originally four or five years ago, thought that I would

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