Eight books by writers from Kazakhstan, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with To Hell with Poets and The Silent Steppe: The Memoir of a Kazak Nomad Under Stalin.
Kazakh literature grew from the voice: epics were passed down aloud, and akyns, improvising poet-singers, still compete in public contests. Its national poet is Abai Kunanbaiuly (1845–1904), whose life Mukhtar Auezov turned into the novel Abai, set among the nomadic clans of the steppe. Talasbek Asemkulov's A Life at Noon follows a boy who becomes a master of the dombyra, and Abish Kekilbayev's Ballad of Forgotten Years tells a Kazakh–Turkmen feud in the manner of a sung ballad. Soviet rule runs through much of the rest. Mukhamet Shayakhmetov's memoir The Silent Steppe recalls a nomad childhood torn apart by collectivisation and famine, and Rollan Seisenbayev's The Dead Wander in the Desert follows the draining of the Aral Sea. Newer translations bring in women's voices: the anthology Amanat, Saule Doszhan's The Tragedy of a Bastard and Baqytgul Sarmekova's village stories, To Hell with Poets.
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Short, often blunt stories about women and villagers in rural and small-town Kazakhstan living under family and social pressure.
A memoir of nomadic Kazakh life in the 1920s-30s, showing traditional aul customs and the devastation of Stalin's collectivization and the famine.
A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel about a boy in Soviet-era rural Kazakhstan who grows up to become a master of the dombyra, the traditional two-stringed lute.
The first part of Auezov's epic about the 19th-century Kazakh poet Abai Kunanbaiuly, who grows up among nomadic clans on the steppe.
An anthology of stories and essays by 13 women writers from Kazakhstan.
A prose ballad told in a bardic style about a long feud between Kazakh and Turkmen nomads on the steppe, set off by a warrior's revenge.
A retired fisherman and his son try and fail to stop Soviet policies that destroy the Aral Sea and the communities around it.
A story about surrogacy and the Kazakh tradition of tracing seven generations of ancestry ("zheti ata"), published in English with a second piece, "My Own Strange Heart", about Kazakhstan's first heart transplant.
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