Elif Batuman is a writer who got her PhD in comparative literature, focusing on Russian literature. Her first two books, The Possessed and The Idiot, the second of which was nominated for a Pulitzer prize, borrow titles from novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky. In her recent article for The New Yorker, Batuman writes about how she originally read and fell in love with the novels as universal, non-ideological reflections on the human condition. But over the past few years, she has been rereading these novels as reflections of the time and place in which they were written—specifically, as books that were written in the context of Russian empire. Writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Nikolai Gogol contended with themes of empire in their books, and alternately supported, opposed, benefited from, and contended with Russian imperialism throughout their lives and careers. Today, these same writers are appropriated by Vladimir Putin to justify his imperialist aims and wars of aggression. In this conversation with Brooke, Batuman discusses how she's grappling with difficult questions about the intersection of politics and art, and how she questions the form of the novel in her latest book, Either/Or.