The Readymade Thief is smart and strange, full of lovely Duchampian tricks and treats. Augustus Rose has infused his thriller with the true Dada spirit, nothing is quite what it seems. I loved it.

In his highly addictive and multi-aceted first novel, Augustus Rose pits an irrepressible and gritty young heroine against a sinister group of fanatics. The Readymade Thief is a kickass debut from start to finish.

The Readymade Thief is my favorite kind of book: an improbable one … A novel that's unexpected, uncategorizable, unputdownable.

A rewarding novel full of pleasures and surprises. Every time I thought I knew where the story was going, it took me somewhere stranger and deeper than I could have imagined. A rich, heady mix of ideas and thrills.

Augustus Rose shows that he has one of the steadiest hands in fiction … Rose has crafted something memorable, crackling with energy, a truly wonderful tale.

Complex, twisty and full of suspense.

There's something for everyone here – art history, physics, hackers and literary mystery, all wrapped up in a page-turning thriller.

A real rollercoaster of a book that did not stop with excitement page after page…thrilling to read and kept me on the edge of my seat.

Addictive literary puzzle.

Rich and enchanting.

A great story teller who writes in a clean and compelling style. Rose is undoubtedly one to watch.

Complex on many intellectual levels, drawing heavily on theories of art history and physics, and the mystery is deep and satisfying in both its unpredictability and its culmination. The sheer scope is impressive, as are Rose’s evocative descriptions of underground and abandoned places, reminiscent of David Lynch’s films … Admirably ambitious.

The heroine of Augustus Rose’s strange and wonderful debut, The Readymade Thief is a piece of work ... The book is beautifully written ... embracing not only surrealism but also such disparate topics as designer drugs, alchemy, urban exploration and, of course, cults ... Rose’s story is wildly unpredictable, big-hearted and always fascinating.

There are very few things in life that are better than finding a novel that takes you somewhere you’ve never been, and reveals a world that you know nothing about: and that’s what lives at the heart of The Idiot. Fresh, fascinating and filled with details that are impossibly foreign and intricately fascinating, it’s a must-read for everyone looking to step outside their own lives for a little while and learn something about the experience of someone else coming into their own in such a difficult world.

Batuman’s brainy novel is leavened with humor and a heroine incapable of artifice.

The Idiot is a baffling, if brilliant, first novel.

[A] witty, smart and endlessly-entertaining coming-of-age story.

The Idiot is an affectionate portrait of first love in all its bumbling haplessness, and a playful celebration of the power and limitations of language.

Very funny indeed. The Idiot is the richly observant story of [Selin's] unique and eccentric coming of age.

Generously capacious… The triumph of Batuman’s book is to make this period of youth matter.

You know when you love someone but they don’t love you back?... It’s a feeling so expertly drawn in The Idiot that you may well start to get flashbacks of your own unrequited tristes… The Idiot is beautiful in every passage, in every turn of the phrase, and full of wry observations that make you feel as if you’ve never really seen the world.

Batuman captures the amplified, airless banality of the 1990s with flip sentences… Light-hearted but of high quality, it falls into the loafing abroad, goofing and self-knowing genre.

The whole novel is full of hilarious, brilliant observations about writing, life and crushes.

One of the funniest and most inventive youngish writers of non-fiction in America… Selin’s meandering observations and gentle humour make her an engaging narrator… Batuman examines complex subjects with an appealing lightness of touch… The scene when Selin leaves the Hungarian village is surprisingly moving and encapsulates the overall effect of a novel which reminds us that dead time can be full of life.

Sweetly funny, The Idiot rejects the doctrine of omitting needless words in favour of marvelling…at the complexities of language and communication.

Charming… A gentle coming-of-age novel drawing on Batuman’s time at Harvard in the mid-1990s… It’s in such acute portrayals of early adulthood’s uncertainties that this pleasantly rambling tale leaves its most vivid impression.

A delightfully digressive campus novel.

There is more than one idiot in this delightful and slyly funny coming-of-age novel... Will strike a chord for any former fresher who felt the same way. (That would be all of us.)

Batuman, in seemingly writing a novel about nothing, has produced an incredibly complex, accurate and funny novel.

I never want to finish it, so I’m reading it very slowly.

Every page is thicketed with jokes, riffs, theories of language. It’s a portrait of an intellectual and sentimental education that offers almost unseemly pleasure.

Elif Batuman is a real writer, and should be allowed to write whatever the hell she likes.

Selin’s deadpan narration is often very funny indeed

This is a capacious book that creates an alternative world

At once clever and clueless, Batuman’s heroine shows us with just how messy it can be to forge a self

One of the best novels I read all summer... a painstakingly accurate depiction of the balancing act that is student-life. As clever as it is funny, Batuman's debut novel allows us to laugh at our own stupidity, and celebrate our own cluelessness.

The Idiot... manages the trick of being laugh-out-loud funny while not actually being a comedy. It just observers life, in all its truth and is hilarious for page after page.

I finally read The Idiot by Elif Batuman and everyone is correct, she is clearly a genius

An immersive look into friendship, parenthood, sex, and grief - as well as the fragility of love. It is told with such detail, you're left wanting more

Beautifully written and observed

Evans is extraordinarily good on the minutiae of grief, family, and the fragility of love

a lyrical portrait of modern London