Abstract

“Born in an ancient city in what is now Kyrgyzstan, Hamid Ismailov is an Uzbek novelist and poet who was forced to leave his home in Tashkent when his writing brought him to the attention of government officials. Under threat of arrest he moved to London and joined the BBC World Service, where he is now Head of the Central Asian Service.

“Hamid is a prolific writer of poetry and prose, and his books have been published in Uzbek,... Russian, French, German, Turkish and other languages – but his work is still banned in Uzbekistan. His novel The Railway (Железная дорога) was translated into English in 2006 and praised by critics as “a work of rare beauty”.”—BBC website

Hamid Ismailov’s lecture at Cambridge will consider whether the Soviet novel in fact existed—and if so, in what form(s). One of Ismailov’s reasons for writing the acclaimed ‘Railway’ was his feeling that the connection between Soviet reality and Soviet literature varied in different languages. He will explore Soviet novels in non-Russian languages that addressed only the people who spoke them: Uzbeks, Georgians, Moldavans, and more.

Photo from Hamid Ismailov’s official site, http://www.hamidismailov.com/.