Hamid Ismailov: 5 books

Description “I am Moscow’s underground son, the result of one too many nights on the town,” says Mbobo, the precocious 12-year-old narrator of Uzbek master Hamid Ismailov’s novel, The Underground. Born from a Siberian woman and an African athlete who came to compete in the 1980 Moscow...

Winner of the EBRD Literature Prize 2019 Named One of '10 Books to Read This Spring' by Tatler Online ‘My book of the year’ — Caroline Eden ‘A mesmerising — and terrifying — novel of tremendous range, energy and potency. This brilliant translation establishes Ismailov...

Description “In the steppe near Tashkent they came upon a never-ending ladder with wooden rungs and iron rails and that stretched across the earth from horizon to horizon ... Whistling and thundering, a snake-like wonder hurtled past them, packed both on the inside and on top with infidels...

A Poet and Bin-Laden is a novel set in Central Asia at the turn of the 21st century against a swirling backdrop of Islamic fundamentalism in the Ferghana Valley and beyond. The story begins on the eve of 9/11, with the narrator’s haunting description of the airplane attack on the Twin Towers...

A haunting Russian tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War. Yerzhan grows up in a remote part of Soviet Kazakhstan where atomic weapons are tested. As a young boy he falls in love with the neighbour's daughter and one evening, to impress her, he dives into a forbidden lake. The...