Hamid Ismailov Livres

Named one of “the best Russian novels of the 21st Century,” The Underground is the unforgettable story of an abandoned mixed-race boy navigating the wondrous and terrifying city of Moscow before the Soviet Union’s collapse. “I am Moscow’s underground son, the result of one too many nights on the town.” So begins the story of Mbobo, the precocious 12-year-old narrator of this captivating novel by exiled Uzbek author and BBC journalist Hamid Ismailov. Born to a Siberian woman and an African athlete who came to compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Mbobo must navigate the complexities of being a fatherless, mixed-raced boy in the shaky terrain of the Soviet Union before its collapse. With echoes of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Ismailov’s novel tackles head-on the problems of race and the relationship between the individual and society in a thoroughly modern context. While paying homage to great Russian authors of the past—Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gorky, Nabokov, and Pushkin—Ismailov emerges as a master of a new kind of Russian writing that revels in the sordid reality and diversity of the country today. Named one of “the best Russian novels of the 21st Century" (Continent Magazine), The Underground is a dizzying and moving tour of the Soviet capital, on the surface and beneath, before its colossal fall.

"On New Years' Eve 1938, the writer Abdulla Qodiriy is taken from his home by the Soviet secret police and thrown into a Tashkent prison. There, to distract himself from the physical and psychological torment of beatings and mindless interrogations, he attempts to mentally reconstruct the novel he was writing at the time of his arrest - based on the tragic life of the Uzbek poet-queen Oyhon, married to three khans in succession, and living as Abdulla now does, with the threat of execution hanging over her. As he gets to know his cellmates, Abdulla discovers that the Great Game of Oyhon's time, when English and Russian spies infiltrated the courts of Central Asia, has echoes in the 1930s present, but as his identification with his protagonist increases and past and present overlap it seems that Abdulla's inability to tell fact from fiction will be his undoing. The Devils' Dance - banned in Uzbekistan for twenty-seven years - brings to life the extraordinary culture of 19th century Turkestan, a world of lavish poetry recitals, brutal polo matches, and a cosmopolitan and culturally diverse Islam rarely described in western literature."--Publisher's description.

Set in Central Asia during the early 21st century, this "reality novel" offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of militants and the Taliban amidst the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Ferghana Valley. Through vivid storytelling, it explores the complexities of their internal dynamics and the socio-political landscape, providing a unique perspective on a turbulent period in history.

A radio presenter interprets one of his dreams as an initiation by the world of spirits into the role of a Manaschi, a Kyrgyz bard and shaman who recites and performs the epic poem, Manas, and is revered as someone connected with supernatural forces. Travelling to his native mountainous village, populated by Tajiks and Kyrgyz, and unravelling his personal and national history, our hero Bekesh instead witnesses a full re-enactment of the epic's wrath. Following on from the award winning The Devils' Dance and Of Strangers and Bees, this is the third and final book in Ismailov's informal Central Asia trilogy. -- From publisher's website

‘Life in exile! May it be cursed. Once you have become a stranger, a stranger you shall remain; you may endeavour to make friends, but the task is a difficult one, full end to end with uncertainty.‘In the latest thrilling multi-stranded epic from the award-winning author of The Devils’ Dance, an Uzbek writer in exile traces the fate of the medieval polymath Avicenna, who shaped Islamic thought and science for centuries.Waking from a portentous dream, Uzbek writer Sheikhov is convinced that the medieval polymath Avicenna lives on, condemned to roam the world. The novel follows Avicenna in various incarnations across the ages from Ottoman Turkey to medieval Germany and Renaissance Italy. Sheikhov plies the same route, though his troubles are distinctly modern as he endures the petty humiliations of exile.Following the award-winning The Devils' Dance, Hamid Ismailov has crafted another masterpiece, combining traditional oral storytelling with contemporary global fiction to create a modern Sufi parable about the search for truth and wisdom.

Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. At the heart of both the town and the novel stands the railway station - a source of income and influence, and a connection to the greater world beyond the town.

Durch die Weite der Steppe Kasachstans fährt ratternd ein Zug. In ihm begegnen sich ein Reisender und Erjan, das Wunderkind. Der Knabe spielt mitten in dieser vom Zug durchquerten Einöde so virtuos auf seiner Violine, dass nicht nur dem Erzähler Hören und Sagen vergeht. Doch die Musik bleibt nicht das einzige Wunder. Denn der Junge, der aussieht wie zehn oder zwölf, ist in Wahrheit bereits ein Mann von 27 Jahren; als Kind tauchte er allen Warnungen zum Trotz in einen nuklear verseuchten See. Hamid Ismailov versetzt damit das Blechtrommel -Motiv des Immer-Kind-Bleibenden in die Einöde des von 486 Atombombentests verseuchten Kasachstan und gibt ihm eine herbe Intensität von tiefer Schönheit. Zwei Welten prallen darin aufeinander: die Weite und Einsamkeit der Steppe Kasachstans und die moderne Welt außerhalb davon – der Zug, der diese wie stehen gebliebene Welt täglich durchfährt, die Atomtests, die wie eine unsichtbare Macht die Natur und die Menschen verändern, die Musik, die einen anderen Rhythmus in Yerzhans Leben bringt.