By Daniel Kalder When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at aged 89 in August 2008, his reputation had been in flux for a long time. Even so, while most obituaries acknowledged the power and significance of The Gulag Archipelago and his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he was nevertheless dogged to the grave by accusations of anti-Semitism, reactionary …
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Turkmenistan’s Tragicomic Publishing Revolution
By Daniel Kalder When the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was invented in 1925, the literacy rate among its mostly nomadic population was somewhere between 2-3%. By 1970 not only had universal literacy been achieved, but the country had acquired its own national literature and mini-canon of “great authors,” many of them writing in forms—novels, plays, film scripts—that had been alien …
Bonus Material: A Short History of Turkmen Literature
By Daniel Kalder Turkmen literature began in the 18th century, thanks to Makhtumkuli (1733- 1813) who composed mournful, painful poems about injustice, the decline of morals and the general harshness of life. Then came poets such as Mollanepes and Kemine whose works remain popular among Turkmen today. Makhtumkuli’s own poetry remained totally unknown in the West until the mid-1990s, when …