I used to enjoy travel books, but in the last years I fell out of love with the genre. I find that too often they slip into bragging, exoticising, lecturing or just being boring. I rarely read literary criticism. So, I'm the first to be surprised by how much I have liked The Possessed, which skillfully weaves tales of the author's travel in Turkey and the former USSR with reflections on book and literary theory. It is vivid, witty, well-written and often very clever. I did not enjoy as much the final part of the book, focusing in on college life in the states and associated love interests. Perhaps the author is not as good as teasing out what is significant, poetic or funny from her everyday Californian surroundings as she is when she's in Samarkand.