Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, aka Arkadag (The Protector), has joined Gaddafi, Mussolini, and Saddam Hussein in the line of dictators who wrote fiction.
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 …