Amanat - by Zaure Batayeva & Shelley Fairweather-Vega (Paperback)

About the Book

An unprecedented collection of women's voices from the heart of Central Asia.

Book Synopsis

World Literature Today's Notable Translations of 2022

The Millions Most Anticipated, 2022

Words Without Borders Watchlist, July 2022

An unprecedented collection of women's voices from the heart of Central Asia.

From the foreword by Gabriel Mcguire: "I cannot think of anything quite like ... Amanat."

A man is arrested for a single typo, a woman gets on buses at random, and two friends reunite in a changed world.... Diverse in form, scope and style, Amanat brings together the voices of thirteen female Kazakhstani writers, to offer a glimpse into the many lives, stories, and histories of one of the largest countries to emerge from the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The twenty-four stories in Amanat, translated into English from Kazakh and Russian, comprise a groundbreaking survey of women's writing in the Central Asian country over its thirty years of independence, paying homage to the rich but largely unrecorded oral storytelling tradition of the region. Contemplating nostalgia, politics, and intergenerational history in a time altered by modernity, Amanat acutely traces the uncertainties, struggles, joys, and losses of a corner of the post-Soviet world often unseen and overlooked.

Utterly absorbing, Amanat is an invitation to listen-the women of Kazakhstan have stories to tell.

Review Quotes

"Turkic languages, including Kazakh, do not have a gender. The nomadic past treated everyone on horseback equally, and therefore the role of women in the history of these peoples was no less than the role of men. This book is proof of that...All these tender voices come to us from their cities and steppes like thunder booming, like birds crying, like hearts breaking. These rare gems, lifted from their native soil and skillfully replanted by Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega into English, represent the first anthology of its kind."

-Hamid Ismailov

"Explore[s] the challenges of modern life--personal, cultural, and political--in fresh and surprising ways."

-World Literature Today

"Introduces the most representative yet diverse voices from post-Soviet Kazakhstan...A watershed moment in the wider appreciation and diffusion of Central Asian literature. Most striking about these stories is the sheer exuberance of the storytelling and the tang of the language."

-The Millions

"Reading Amanat feels a bit like happening upon a performance that draws you in even though you lack the full context...If you join the conversation between the 12 authors and 2 translators of this illuminating volume, you may be tempted to converse far into the night."

-Asian Review of Books

"Though steeped in sadness and suffering, these vivid and remarkable stories often simmer with the humor of everyday life."

-Anne Charnock, Dream Before the Start of Time

"Showcase[s] not only lives previously overlooked by the English-language readers but also a set of narrative techniques that allow massive historical traumas to be comprehended, and deeply meaningful, on the human scale. These stories captivate and surprise the reader at every turn, and delight: with their sly humor, wisdom, and defiant resilience."

-Olgar Zilberbourg, Like Water

"This brilliant collection offers a wealth of new insights on the nature of modern Kazakhstani identity and the country's tangled relationship with its Soviet past...The stories are engrossing, and the anthology greatly enriches our understanding of Kazakhstani society."

-Sarah Cameron, University of Maryland

"An intriguing perspective into the lives of people in Kazakhstan and an insight into the ability of language and literature to reflect larger societal moods and processes."

-Hopscotch Translation

"The window to contemporary Kazakhstani literature...carefully edited and superbly translated."

-The Alma Review