Of Strangers and Bees: in Conversation with Hamid Ismailov

Join Pushkin House for an evening with Hamid Ismailov and Anna Aslanyan to explore Uzbek culture and literature via Ismailov’s latest novel, Of Strangers and Bees.

Hamid Ismailov is an award-winning writer and journalist whose works are banned in Uzbekistan. In his novels, he explores Central Asian and (post-) Soviet culture. Following the acclaimed The Devils’ Dance, Of Strangers and Bees is Hamid Ismailov’s latest masterpiece, combining traditional oral storytelling with contemporary global fiction to create a modern Sufi parable about the search for truth and wisdom: Uzbek writer Sheikhov is convinced that the medieval polymath Avicenna still lives, condemned to roam the world. In the book, translated into English by Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Avicenna appears 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.

Hamid Ismailov is a journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 due to what the state called ‘unacceptable democratic tendencies’. He came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service. Several of his Russian-original novels have been published to great acclaim (The Dead Lake was named Independent Book of the Year and Guardian Readers Book of the Year in 2014). The Devils’ Dance, his first novel to be translated from Uzbek by Donald Rayfield and John Farndon, won the EBRD Prize. He is a former BBC Writer in Residence and BBC Uzbek correspondent.

Anna Aslanyan is a freelance journalist and translator. She writes for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and other publications, mainly about books and arts. Her popular history of translation will be published by Profile in 2020