Two books by writers from Turkmenistan, set there, that give a real sense of the place: Death of the Snake Catcher: Short Stories and The Tale of Aypi.
Turkmenistan's literature has deep roots in oral epics such as Görogly, sung by bakhshis, traditional singer-poets. Its best-loved poet, Magtymguly Pyragy, wrote in the eighteenth century and is still honoured as the national poet. Song and story were long carried by performance and memory rather than print; the country was a Soviet republic until 1991, and since independence publishing has been tightly controlled by the state, so very little Turkmen writing has reached English.
Edmond O'Donovan's The Merv Oasis is an Irish war correspondent's account of the Turkmen tribes on the eve of Russian conquest in the 1880s. Colin Thubron's The Lost Heart of Asia travels through the newly independent Central Asian republics, taking in Ashgabat and the ruins of ancient Merv.
Stories of Soviet-era and post-Soviet Turkmen life, set among Karakum desert communities and the tensions between tradition, nature and state control.
When a Soviet government directive orders a traditional Turkmen fishing village on the Caspian Sea to relocate for a new state health resort, the community's resistance is spiritually charged by the vengeful ghost of Aypi, a local woman unjustly executed on those shores three centuries earlier.
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