Selin is the novel’s protagonist and narrator. She is in her sophomore year at Harvard College, studying literature, and wants to become a writer. Selin is an American student born to divorced Turkish émigré parents, although she has much more interest in Russian than Turkish culture. She grew up in New Jersey and traveled each summer to stay with her grandmother in Ankara, Turkey, where she always felt jet-lagged and slightly out of place. As the novel begins, Selin is just returning to campus after a summer abroad: She volunteered as an English language instructor in a small village in rural Hungary, a position she obtained through a friend of a former classmate and love interest named Ivan. Her relationship with Ivan had been confusingly undefined, and toward the end of the summer, he cut off communication. Selin, who still has feelings for Ivan, is crushed. On returning to Harvard, she moves into overflow housing with a group of classmates and resumes her friendship with Svetlana, a Serbian-born student whom she had met in Russian class during freshman year.

Selin is intellectually gifted, highly introspective, and deeply analytical. Although in some regards, she thrives in the high-intensity

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