Our UK publicist Nicky has been taking part in English PEN’s Translated Fiction Book Club (curious? info here). The group reads a book in translation from a different country each month, and February took them to Uzbekistan, via Hamid Ismailov’s The Dead Lake, published by our friends over at Peirene Press. Well, technically the book took them to Kazakhstan, where it’s set, but as it was written in Russian, and partially set in Soviet times, we’ll let the fact that Ismailov is Uzbek be the determining factor here…
The Dead Lake is a fantastic novel, set in the steppe and narrated by a passenger on a train crossing that vast expanse. The tale begins as our narrator encounters the diminutive violinist Yerzhan, who tells the incredible tale of his upbringing on a isolated waystation near The Zone – a nuclear testing exclusion area. The extraordinary life of this tiny community is rich with detail, but also an incredible sense of scale that corresponds to the landscape itself. This contrast in scale also makes itself felt in the novel’s themes – the events of the novel are gripping, funny, odd in themselves; they simultaneously allow the reader to reflect on ecological matters and the interaction between humans and nature, and on the politics of the Soviet period.
The Book Club was also lucky enough to welcome Hamid Ismailov and Peirene Press publisher Meike Ziervogel as guests to the February meeting. There’s plenty more that could be said about the book, but we hope we’ve piqued your interest!