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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"Anyone who's gone through something similar himself will take it with him to the grave. Anyone who hasn't will simply say 'There but for the grace of God!' I'd say that there's nothing here one can make literature out of. ... from the human point of view: there is death here, but no love. It's hard to make literature out of nothing but death; that's why I wouldn't write about this place."
Stunning, impactful, deeply moving. The Devil's Dance is two stories in one -- following great Uzbek novelist Abdulla Qodiriy's incarceration by the NKVD as well as the plot of the book he wants to write, which follows Oyxon, who is abusively forced into marriage by three Khans, all against the backdrop of the politics of the Great Game. Much of the novel is based in history -- Quodiriy was imprisoned in 1937-8 and ultimately executed during the Great Purge (as were many other Uzbek writers and intellectuals), and the Khans as well as many background characters (the British spies, several other Uzbek authors) are indeed historical figures. As the book progresses, and Qodiriy's incarceration takes a toll on his ability to trust his own mind and perceptions, the stories blend together as Qodiriy finds parallels between Oyxon's captivity and his own. I've learned more about this particular period in the history of the region as this book as sent me on various tangents of research to explore what is and isn't fictionalized here, but most of all I appreciate <i>The Devil's Dance</i> for its account of Qodiriy's experiences and mindset as he struggles, amidst extraordinarily harsh and tormenting conditions, to maintain his focus on his story. Though it took a little while to get into at the beginning, I soon found myself entirely emotionally invested in Qodiriy's life. I look forward to reading more from Hamid Ismailov.
Stunning, impactful, deeply moving. The Devil's Dance is two stories in one -- following great Uzbek novelist Abdulla Qodiriy's incarceration by the NKVD as well as the plot of the book he wants to write, which follows Oyxon, who is abusively forced into marriage by three Khans, all against the backdrop of the politics of the Great Game. Much of the novel is based in history -- Quodiriy was imprisoned in 1937-8 and ultimately executed during the Great Purge (as were many other Uzbek writers and intellectuals), and the Khans as well as many background characters (the British spies, several other Uzbek authors) are indeed historical figures. As the book progresses, and Qodiriy's incarceration takes a toll on his ability to trust his own mind and perceptions, the stories blend together as Qodiriy finds parallels between Oyxon's captivity and his own. I've learned more about this particular period in the history of the region as this book as sent me on various tangents of research to explore what is and isn't fictionalized here, but most of all I appreciate <i>The Devil's Dance</i> for its account of Qodiriy's experiences and mindset as he struggles, amidst extraordinarily harsh and tormenting conditions, to maintain his focus on his story. Though it took a little while to get into at the beginning, I soon found myself entirely emotionally invested in Qodiriy's life. I look forward to reading more from Hamid Ismailov.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Incest, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Murder, Gaslighting
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Medical content, Death of parent, Alcohol
I was in prison with him
There are novels that make all other novels fade. There are novels that transform the world while you’re reading them. Many writers in the USA try for the Great American Novel, few succeed.
This, however, is a truly great novel about our world, superbly translated.
The stories and poems from the past are masterfully interwoven into one beautiful carpet, on which the reader can walk, rest or sleep for many days.
It is dark, but the days of the writer in the Soviet prison, are full of thoughts about our very existance, and the power of narration.
Maybe it is because I am a writer myself, but I felt I was imprisoned by the novel.
There are novels that make all other novels fade. There are novels that transform the world while you’re reading them. Many writers in the USA try for the Great American Novel, few succeed.
This, however, is a truly great novel about our world, superbly translated.
The stories and poems from the past are masterfully interwoven into one beautiful carpet, on which the reader can walk, rest or sleep for many days.
It is dark, but the days of the writer in the Soviet prison, are full of thoughts about our very existance, and the power of narration.
Maybe it is because I am a writer myself, but I felt I was imprisoned by the novel.
It feels a bit unfair only giving this novel three stars, because it really started to grow on me during the second half of the book, and I have gotten a lot out of reading it. The reason for the three stars is that I struggled in the beginning and wasn't always sure this was a book I wanted to keep reading. At some point in the story this changed and I became completely invested in both storylines. My star rating is more about me as a reader than the actual quality of the novel (which is probably always true - though I do try to bring some objectivity into it - but I can see it more clearly with this one).
For someone with little knowledge of the author's country of origin this was a brilliant novel for gaining knowledge. Both storylines - the jailed author who is a victim of Stalin's Great Terror and the heroine Oyxon who is a victim of Islamic tyranny in the 1800s - is based on historical events. We get to know Uzbek writers and poets, Emirs and their wives and in both timelines we're introduced to actual or potential British spies. Even though this is just a snippet in the country's history, it is a thorough and engaging snippet, which only made me want to read more from Uzbekistan, both novels and non-fiction (if anyone has recommendations, let me know).
I'm not sure which storyline is more terrifying - and they do become somewhat parallel - but we get glimpses of good moments in the characters' lives on occasion. From the little I learned about Uzbekistan during my political science studies, I believe that it is still an authoritarian - though I think not totalitarian - state, so progress towards a free society with significant political and civil rights for it's citizens has been slow, if not non-existent. The author, Hamid Ismailov, can likely relate to his characters' struggles, as he fled the country in 1992 because of his "unacceptable democratic tendencies". I wanted to write my masters thesis on Kyrgyzstan, but ended up writing about Ukraine instead. After reading The Devil's Dance my urge to learn more about the so-called stan-countries has definitely returned.
For someone with little knowledge of the author's country of origin this was a brilliant novel for gaining knowledge. Both storylines - the jailed author who is a victim of Stalin's Great Terror and the heroine Oyxon who is a victim of Islamic tyranny in the 1800s - is based on historical events. We get to know Uzbek writers and poets, Emirs and their wives and in both timelines we're introduced to actual or potential British spies. Even though this is just a snippet in the country's history, it is a thorough and engaging snippet, which only made me want to read more from Uzbekistan, both novels and non-fiction (if anyone has recommendations, let me know).
I'm not sure which storyline is more terrifying - and they do become somewhat parallel - but we get glimpses of good moments in the characters' lives on occasion. From the little I learned about Uzbekistan during my political science studies, I believe that it is still an authoritarian - though I think not totalitarian - state, so progress towards a free society with significant political and civil rights for it's citizens has been slow, if not non-existent. The author, Hamid Ismailov, can likely relate to his characters' struggles, as he fled the country in 1992 because of his "unacceptable democratic tendencies". I wanted to write my masters thesis on Kyrgyzstan, but ended up writing about Ukraine instead. After reading The Devil's Dance my urge to learn more about the so-called stan-countries has definitely returned.
Now a very worthy winner of the 2019 EBRD prize
If a man didn’t love his people, if he didn’t value his language, why would he become a writer? But this didn’t mean believing that one’s own people and language were the only ones in the world!
The Devil's Dance is the 2nd translation of a novel by the Uzbek author Hamid Ismailov which I have read; in my review of the first, the 2015 IFFP longlisted The Dead Lake, I was impressed by the prose and translation but left a little disappointed by the brevity and lack of substance, and felt it suffered by obvious comparison to [b:The Tin Drum|35743|The Tin Drum|Günter Grass|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327945103s/35743.jpg|922581]. But The Devil's Dance puts any doubts to rest - this is a far more satisfying, original and significant novel.
This is a book largely rooted in historic facts, indeed from two different eras of Uzbek history, yet a powerful work of the imagination. And while a fascinating novel, also a powerful work of meta-fiction with a novel-within-a-novel, infused with poetry and with much to say about how history and novels are written.
The facts:
Abdulla Qodiriy was one of Uzbekistan's greatest and most popular novelists - indeed his 1921-5 book Days Bygone was the first modern full-length novel in the language.
On 31 December 1937, he was arrested and imprisoned by the NKVD, on charges of nationalist conspiracy as part of Stalin's Great Purge. He spent the rest of his life in a NVKD prison, and was executed in October 1938 alongside many other prominent figures of Uzbek culture, notably the poet Cho’lpon.
As Ismailov himself has explained (http://enews.fergananews.com/articles/2769 - translation not by Donald Rayfield!):
Umar Khan of Kokland;
his son and successor after Umar Khan's death in 1822 until his own death in 1842, Madali Khan. Madali Khan was only 14 when his father died, and his mother the poet Nodira, Umar Khan's first wife, served as his advisor and, many believed, largely ruled as regent in practice. She was also subject of the first postage stamp of independent Uzbekistan post Soviet rule -
http://grandpoohbah.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/nodira-mohlaroyim.html);
and Nasrullo Khan of Bukhara, who had Madali Khan and Nodira executed in 1842 after briefly conquering Kokland
Ismailov's novel brilliant reimagines both Abdulla Qodiriy's last months but also the missing novel he might have written, a novel that centres on the tragic figure of Oyxon, unwilling wife to all three Khans [real or fictional I am less clear]. In Abdulla Qodiriy's story, as retold in this novel, Umar Khan has a conquered enemy, G'ozi-xo'ja, who he has banished into poverty and exile. But the wife of another Khan alerts him that G'ozi-xo'ja:
has a daughter, called Oyxon, a girl of indescribable beauty - words simply can't capture her, tongues become numb, pens break. As the couplet says:
A key - and ambiguous - part in the story is played by the poetess and Queen Nodira . Initially jealous of her husband Umar Khan's new wife the court seethes with intrigue and resentment, albeit not expressed explicitly but instead via duels of poetic rhyming couplets. rather like 21st century rap battles, the words all the more cutting in the elegance. But later she tries to protect her from her rather out of control son.
In Ismailov's novels, accounts of Abdulla's experiences and interrogations in prison are interspersed freely with his attempt to reconstruct in his mind the novel he had been writing. At first he struggles, his own confusion not initially aiding the reader either:
Had he managed to remember what he had written down? Alas, had it all now merged into a meaningless mass? If he could set it down on paper he would never confuse Umar’s Kokland palace with Nasrullo’s fortress in Bukhara, especially as the events were not one year apart, but ten.
But in fact the prison, although without books, is a rich treasure trove of information. His fellow political prisoners, unsurprisingly given the crackdown on Uzbek nationalist culture include poets and other cultural experts - indeed he is pulled up short at one point to find a rare exception:
Abdulla presumed that this lad, too, would know a lot about the nineteenth-century, but no, the youth was neither a historian, nor a spy, nor a trader, nor a mulla: he turned out to be just an ordinary criminal.
And their help takes his story in a different direction, in particular to embrace the wider geo-political struggles of the time between Britain and Russia, in which the Khanates were caught up - the so called Great Game played between the two great powers between 1830 and 1895, a phrase whose historical origin can be traced to a letter in 1840 from the British agent Captain Arthur Conolly to a fellow British officer:
In Abdulla's version, Conolly goes first to Kokland where Oyxon sees in him her own possible hope of salvation.
Their story became famous in Britain after the Jewish Christian missionary Joseph Wolff went to Bukhara in 1843 to discover their fate, narrowly escaped sharing their fate, and returned to the UK to write a book [b:Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the Years 1843-1845, to Ascertain the Fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly|11142533|Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the Years 1843-1845, to Ascertain the Fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly Volume 1|Joseph Wolff|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1349011808s/11142533.jpg|16066082].
In Ismailov's novel, one of Abdulla's fellow prisoners, Muborak, of Jewish descent, claims to have been imprisoned as an English spy, and to have spent 3 years in England, amongst the Jewish community there, where he met the grandson of Joseph Wolff. True or not, he certainly has read Wolff's book, of which Abdulla was unaware:
But was it credible? There were stories gushing out of Muborak like a fountain! But if they were true, they would be invaluable for Abdulla, for the story he was devising. After all, there were no books for him to consult here.
As the story proceeds, the parallels between Abdulla's story and the story he is writing of Oxyon become explicitly stronger, indeed he starts to write the story that way. At times, particularly as his mind starts to weaken under interrogation and long imprisonment, they even become literally confused in his mind - at one point he seems to finds himself in a cell with Stoddart and Conolly themselves, who play an early version of scrabble, and towards the novel's end he writes himself into the 19th Century story, speaking direct to Oxyon.
And while his own fate seems clear, particularly once the investigation is concluded, he keeps trying to prolong the story of Oxyon, as if by keeping her and his story alive, he may keep himself alive. In the last pages he is led out to meet his end, he finally meets again the poet Cho'lpon.
Outside dogs started barking, chains rattled, soldiers yelled. But Cho'lpon, however hoarse, did not stop reciting
The Devil's Dance is published by Tilted Axis Press, founded by the inaugural Man Booker International winning Deborah Smith. Their mission statement:
The Dead Lake was translated into English (by the excellent Andrew Bromfield) from a Russian version prepared by Ismailov himself. But for The Devil's Dance, Donald Rayfield had to revert to the Uzbek original (and assistance from the author) since the Russian version, not by Ismailov, was (per Rayfield's afterwords) 'travestied not translated', potentially making this the first contemporary novel translated into English directed from Uzbek.
Rayfield is not a translator whose work I have read before, although I was aware of him from his rather forthright views on the 'P and V' controversy in Russian-English translation. He is no fan of Oprah's favourites:
I am not entirely sure that the "P&V approach" does work better for poetry -at least a better approach is available and Tilted Axis and Rayfield, vitally, had the poems, particularly of both Nodira and Cho'lpon, that play such a key and extensive role in the novel, translated by a specialist, John Farndon, who efforts rather puts the lie to Samuel Johnson's famous edict that "Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated." Farndon himself claims his version are "mere shadows of the originals", but what we read in English is certainly impressive and supports his argument that [while] "you might think that replicating metre and rhyme would tempt the translator to stray from the original, in fact, I found the opposite to be true since in order to phrase with clarity in English, rather than poetic obfuscation, I needed to work hard to get to the heart of the precise meaning and the way the original worked."
We the readers are lucky indeed to benefit from the hard-work and dedication of Tilted Axis, Rayfield and Farndon, in bringing us Ismailov's wonderful novel.
If a man didn’t love his people, if he didn’t value his language, why would he become a writer? But this didn’t mean believing that one’s own people and language were the only ones in the world!
The Devil's Dance is the 2nd translation of a novel by the Uzbek author Hamid Ismailov which I have read; in my review of the first, the 2015 IFFP longlisted The Dead Lake, I was impressed by the prose and translation but left a little disappointed by the brevity and lack of substance, and felt it suffered by obvious comparison to [b:The Tin Drum|35743|The Tin Drum|Günter Grass|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327945103s/35743.jpg|922581]. But The Devil's Dance puts any doubts to rest - this is a far more satisfying, original and significant novel.
This is a book largely rooted in historic facts, indeed from two different eras of Uzbek history, yet a powerful work of the imagination. And while a fascinating novel, also a powerful work of meta-fiction with a novel-within-a-novel, infused with poetry and with much to say about how history and novels are written.
The facts:
Abdulla Qodiriy was one of Uzbekistan's greatest and most popular novelists - indeed his 1921-5 book Days Bygone was the first modern full-length novel in the language.
On 31 December 1937, he was arrested and imprisoned by the NKVD, on charges of nationalist conspiracy as part of Stalin's Great Purge. He spent the rest of his life in a NVKD prison, and was executed in October 1938 alongside many other prominent figures of Uzbek culture, notably the poet Cho’lpon.
As Ismailov himself has explained (http://enews.fergananews.com/articles/2769 - translation not by Donald Rayfield!):
In 1937, Qodiriy was going to write a novel, which he said was to make his readers to stop reading his iconic novels "Days Bygone" and "Scorpion from the altar," so beautiful would it have been. The novel would have told about a certain maid, who became a wife of three Khans - a kind of Uzbek Helen of Troy. He told everyone: "I will sit down this winter and finish this novel - I have done my preparatory work, it remains only to write. Then people will stop reading my previous books". He began writing this novel, but on the December 31, 1937 he was arrested. All manuscripts were confiscated and later burnt. Not a single word was left of the novel.The three Khans concerned are the real-life historical Khan's of Kokland and Bukhara, two of the three Khanate's - alongside Khiva - that comprised what is now Uzbekistan during the 19th century, in particular 1820-1842 when the novel was to have been set:
Umar Khan of Kokland;
his son and successor after Umar Khan's death in 1822 until his own death in 1842, Madali Khan. Madali Khan was only 14 when his father died, and his mother the poet Nodira, Umar Khan's first wife, served as his advisor and, many believed, largely ruled as regent in practice. She was also subject of the first postage stamp of independent Uzbekistan post Soviet rule -
http://grandpoohbah.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/nodira-mohlaroyim.html);
and Nasrullo Khan of Bukhara, who had Madali Khan and Nodira executed in 1842 after briefly conquering Kokland
Ismailov's novel brilliant reimagines both Abdulla Qodiriy's last months but also the missing novel he might have written, a novel that centres on the tragic figure of Oyxon, unwilling wife to all three Khans [real or fictional I am less clear]. In Abdulla Qodiriy's story, as retold in this novel, Umar Khan has a conquered enemy, G'ozi-xo'ja, who he has banished into poverty and exile. But the wife of another Khan alerts him that G'ozi-xo'ja:
has a daughter, called Oyxon, a girl of indescribable beauty - words simply can't capture her, tongues become numb, pens break. As the couplet says:
The moment I see her, my ears runs with tearsUmar Khan sets out to make her his wife, forcing her father to break-off her engagement to her beloved fiance, and violating her on their wedding night. When Umar dies relatively shortly after, she hopes her fiance may take her back, only for her step-son Madila Khan, in violation of Islamic law, to force his attentions on her and then take her as his wife. And then as Nasrullo Khan sets his sights on the neighbouring kingdom, she becomes one of the prizes she seeks: meanwhile those she loves, or who at least look out for her interests, all meet untimely ends.
As the stars only shine when the sun disappears.
A key - and ambiguous - part in the story is played by the poetess and Queen Nodira . Initially jealous of her husband Umar Khan's new wife the court seethes with intrigue and resentment, albeit not expressed explicitly but instead via duels of poetic rhyming couplets. rather like 21st century rap battles, the words all the more cutting in the elegance. But later she tries to protect her from her rather out of control son.
In Ismailov's novels, accounts of Abdulla's experiences and interrogations in prison are interspersed freely with his attempt to reconstruct in his mind the novel he had been writing. At first he struggles, his own confusion not initially aiding the reader either:
Had he managed to remember what he had written down? Alas, had it all now merged into a meaningless mass? If he could set it down on paper he would never confuse Umar’s Kokland palace with Nasrullo’s fortress in Bukhara, especially as the events were not one year apart, but ten.
But in fact the prison, although without books, is a rich treasure trove of information. His fellow political prisoners, unsurprisingly given the crackdown on Uzbek nationalist culture include poets and other cultural experts - indeed he is pulled up short at one point to find a rare exception:
Abdulla presumed that this lad, too, would know a lot about the nineteenth-century, but no, the youth was neither a historian, nor a spy, nor a trader, nor a mulla: he turned out to be just an ordinary criminal.
And their help takes his story in a different direction, in particular to embrace the wider geo-political struggles of the time between Britain and Russia, in which the Khanates were caught up - the so called Great Game played between the two great powers between 1830 and 1895, a phrase whose historical origin can be traced to a letter in 1840 from the British agent Captain Arthur Conolly to a fellow British officer:
You've a great game, a noble game, before you.In 1838 another British agent, Colonel Charles Stoddart, had gone to Bukhara to persuade Nasrullo to release some Russian slaves and form a treaty with the British, only for Nasrullo to hold him captive, unconvinced that of his true intent. In 1841, Conolly also went to Bukhara to attempt to have Stoddard freed, only to be held captive himself and Nasrullo had both executed both men in June 1842, shortly after having captured and had executed Madali Khan and Nodira in April.
...
If the British Government would only play the grand game — help Russia cordially to all that she has a right to expect — shake hands with Persia — get her all possible amends from Oosbegs — force the Bukhara Amir to be just to us, the Afghans, and other Oosbeg states, and his own kingdom — but why go on; you know my, at any rate in one sense, enlarged views. InshAllah! The expediency, nay the necessity of them will be seen, and we shall play the noble part that the first Christian nation of the world ought to fill.
In Abdulla's version, Conolly goes first to Kokland where Oyxon sees in him her own possible hope of salvation.
Their story became famous in Britain after the Jewish Christian missionary Joseph Wolff went to Bukhara in 1843 to discover their fate, narrowly escaped sharing their fate, and returned to the UK to write a book [b:Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the Years 1843-1845, to Ascertain the Fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly|11142533|Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the Years 1843-1845, to Ascertain the Fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly Volume 1|Joseph Wolff|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1349011808s/11142533.jpg|16066082].
In Ismailov's novel, one of Abdulla's fellow prisoners, Muborak, of Jewish descent, claims to have been imprisoned as an English spy, and to have spent 3 years in England, amongst the Jewish community there, where he met the grandson of Joseph Wolff. True or not, he certainly has read Wolff's book, of which Abdulla was unaware:
But was it credible? There were stories gushing out of Muborak like a fountain! But if they were true, they would be invaluable for Abdulla, for the story he was devising. After all, there were no books for him to consult here.
As the story proceeds, the parallels between Abdulla's story and the story he is writing of Oxyon become explicitly stronger, indeed he starts to write the story that way. At times, particularly as his mind starts to weaken under interrogation and long imprisonment, they even become literally confused in his mind - at one point he seems to finds himself in a cell with Stoddart and Conolly themselves, who play an early version of scrabble, and towards the novel's end he writes himself into the 19th Century story, speaking direct to Oxyon.
And while his own fate seems clear, particularly once the investigation is concluded, he keeps trying to prolong the story of Oxyon, as if by keeping her and his story alive, he may keep himself alive. In the last pages he is led out to meet his end, he finally meets again the poet Cho'lpon.
Outside dogs started barking, chains rattled, soldiers yelled. But Cho'lpon, however hoarse, did not stop reciting
'It is a leaf's destiny to fall;As he got out of the Black Maria and drew the fresh air into his lungs, Abdulla had time for one final thought: what a pity, only one of my stories has an ending.
'That is how it must be,' so they say.
But mighty Life, which makes rules for all,
Makes thousands more every day.
The Devil's Dance is published by Tilted Axis Press, founded by the inaugural Man Booker International winning Deborah Smith. Their mission statement:
To shake up contemporary international literature.The emphasis placed on translation is vital to their work and shines through strongly here.
Tilted Axis publishes the books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new.
Tilting the axis of world literature from the centre to the margins allows us to challenge that very division. These margins are spaces of compelling innovation, where multiple traditions spark new forms and translation plays a crucial role.
As part of carving out a new direction in the publishing industry, Tilted Axis is also dedicated to improving access. We’re proud to pay our translators the proper rate, and to operate without unpaid interns.
The Dead Lake was translated into English (by the excellent Andrew Bromfield) from a Russian version prepared by Ismailov himself. But for The Devil's Dance, Donald Rayfield had to revert to the Uzbek original (and assistance from the author) since the Russian version, not by Ismailov, was (per Rayfield's afterwords) 'travestied not translated', potentially making this the first contemporary novel translated into English directed from Uzbek.
Rayfield is not a translator whose work I have read before, although I was aware of him from his rather forthright views on the 'P and V' controversy in Russian-English translation. He is no fan of Oprah's favourites:
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky seem to follow the Byzantine principle of producing a translation from which the original, if it were ever lost, might be reconstituted word by word.Certainly Rayfield's prose here ticks the flow, readability and transparency boxes and reading is a pleasure. He does admit to having made one necessary sacrifice - reproducing the variety of dialects of the different inmates that share our hero's cell could only have been done by using different English dialects - which would have been horribly anachronistic - but we are left instead with a rich variety of sayings and proverbs, which indeed are quite striking in the prose and effect at creating a sense of readable otherness.
....
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky seem to follow the Byzantine principle of producing a translation from which the original, if it were ever lost, might be reconstituted word by word.
They have won PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club translation prizes and praise from Oprah Winfrey, but have provoked controversy and condemnation in professional circles.
Their ‘Jack Sprat and his wife’ technique – Pevear knows no Russian, Volokhonsky, evidently, has a Russian academic’s command of English – has often succeeded with Russian poetry (for instance Frances Cornford’s and Esther Polianowsky Salaman’s translations of Tiutchev), but not with prose, where flow, readability and transparency are called for.
The P & V approach – a literal crib by a native speaker of Russian reverentially reworked by a native speaker of English – has been advocated by many Russians, including Vladimir Nabokov, because it appears to respect the original Russian, and because it overrides both the constraints and freedoms of English. As a result, Russia and Russian prose seem much more exotic, obscure, even unreadable: readers who believe in ‘no gain without pain’ are persuaded that their experience is now more authentic.
I am not entirely sure that the "P&V approach" does work better for poetry -at least a better approach is available and Tilted Axis and Rayfield, vitally, had the poems, particularly of both Nodira and Cho'lpon, that play such a key and extensive role in the novel, translated by a specialist, John Farndon, who efforts rather puts the lie to Samuel Johnson's famous edict that "Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated." Farndon himself claims his version are "mere shadows of the originals", but what we read in English is certainly impressive and supports his argument that [while] "you might think that replicating metre and rhyme would tempt the translator to stray from the original, in fact, I found the opposite to be true since in order to phrase with clarity in English, rather than poetic obfuscation, I needed to work hard to get to the heart of the precise meaning and the way the original worked."
We the readers are lucky indeed to benefit from the hard-work and dedication of Tilted Axis, Rayfield and Farndon, in bringing us Ismailov's wonderful novel.
A moving novel about the beloved Uzbek writer Abdulla Qodiriy, a victim of His (he’s too beastly to name in the novel) Great Purge in 1938, along with a raft of Uzbek writers and intellectuals, the most famous of whom also grace these pages. Qodiriy wrote ‘the first modern Uzbek novel’.
To be honest I avoid novels where writers write about writing. Possibly it’s not then fair to say that Abdulla in this novel is the portrait of a writer I have taken most to heart and found most true. Unpretentious, not self-involved… except he is so involved in his stories that his wife gets jealous when he weeps over a woman main he has killed off. He is so involved that he identifies with Oyxon and comes to see he is telling his own story, in hers. The background 19th century story is about tyrants, like the present. There are three women poets. There are three local rulers in different ways tyrannical and unworthy. There are two English spies, for the Great Game becomes an unplanned part of his novel; the Englishmen end up in prison too, and Qodiriy hallucinates them in his prison. Inside prison for a while there is held a symposium of intellectuals held for being anti-Soviet, nationalist, that is, for practising and preserving Uzbek culture. The public for this translation might be more familiar with China and Tibet. This is about Central Asia, or Turkestan, and cultural obliteration by the Soviet government.
But the 19th century was not a glory age, even though Qodiriy gets in trouble for writing the first modern novel on Uzbek history, Past Days – becomes the most celebrated Uzbek writer, and suspect to the government. Despite this, the khans and emirs of Bukhara and Khoqand are frivolous thugs equated with the authorities Qodiriy meets in the present day. In the political world the devils dance on, just to another tune. But the poetry is celebrated, as is Qodiriy’s prose – and both endangered, both stamped out of existence, burnt, declared unspeakable. A library is burnt in the 19th century too, Nodira’s, the poet and queen.
Of Nodira, at first I thought, ‘jealous wife, how dull’, but she is presented as an important poet – Abdulla Qodiriy has an exchange of views in prison about her significance to Uzbek poetry, wherein he argues for her and the other inmate against. Oyxon becomes wife to three emirs or khans – but these are three rapists. Three abusers more or less brutal. She turns to drink. She’s a poet too but her works are lost. Qodiriy searches for them, sure they would tell all about life and be a revelation, but then he is arrested.
Near the end, that unabashed entanglement of the author with his character that Ismailov tells us of, leads to a tender scene where Qodiriy and Oyxon each face the worst and encounter the other as a comfort. Devils’ dance too is what Abdulla’s mother and father used to warn him about: the devils taking over his head if he drifts so into his fictions. Abdulla does ‘go mad’ in prison, where his novel is the anchor to hope, its continuation a something-to-do aside from being interrogated; its figments visit him in prison. But that’s a dance worth risking devils for.
I was frustrated by the translation. For a novel that is about literature, and that celebrates diversity of language, it is a pity that there is no attempt to render the speech ways so important to Qodiriy the narrator. He listens to a fellow prisoner whose speech is ornamented with Persian phrasing, and Qodiriy says he was enchanted not for the content but for the speech – but we have read in plain English, not distinguished from the passages before and after. Nobody wants a dodgy accent, but you can differentiate and you can transport embroidery of words into English. As the translator notes in his afterword, the past and present stories are told in Uzbek’s high and low styles. There is no indication of this distinction in the English prose. I understand we’re to be grateful for English translations out of Uzbek, because there more or less aren’t any. But I can hope another attempt at translation lies in store for this significant novel.
To be honest I avoid novels where writers write about writing. Possibly it’s not then fair to say that Abdulla in this novel is the portrait of a writer I have taken most to heart and found most true. Unpretentious, not self-involved… except he is so involved in his stories that his wife gets jealous when he weeps over a woman main he has killed off. He is so involved that he identifies with Oyxon and comes to see he is telling his own story, in hers. The background 19th century story is about tyrants, like the present. There are three women poets. There are three local rulers in different ways tyrannical and unworthy. There are two English spies, for the Great Game becomes an unplanned part of his novel; the Englishmen end up in prison too, and Qodiriy hallucinates them in his prison. Inside prison for a while there is held a symposium of intellectuals held for being anti-Soviet, nationalist, that is, for practising and preserving Uzbek culture. The public for this translation might be more familiar with China and Tibet. This is about Central Asia, or Turkestan, and cultural obliteration by the Soviet government.
But the 19th century was not a glory age, even though Qodiriy gets in trouble for writing the first modern novel on Uzbek history, Past Days – becomes the most celebrated Uzbek writer, and suspect to the government. Despite this, the khans and emirs of Bukhara and Khoqand are frivolous thugs equated with the authorities Qodiriy meets in the present day. In the political world the devils dance on, just to another tune. But the poetry is celebrated, as is Qodiriy’s prose – and both endangered, both stamped out of existence, burnt, declared unspeakable. A library is burnt in the 19th century too, Nodira’s, the poet and queen.
Of Nodira, at first I thought, ‘jealous wife, how dull’, but she is presented as an important poet – Abdulla Qodiriy has an exchange of views in prison about her significance to Uzbek poetry, wherein he argues for her and the other inmate against. Oyxon becomes wife to three emirs or khans – but these are three rapists. Three abusers more or less brutal. She turns to drink. She’s a poet too but her works are lost. Qodiriy searches for them, sure they would tell all about life and be a revelation, but then he is arrested.
Near the end, that unabashed entanglement of the author with his character that Ismailov tells us of, leads to a tender scene where Qodiriy and Oyxon each face the worst and encounter the other as a comfort. Devils’ dance too is what Abdulla’s mother and father used to warn him about: the devils taking over his head if he drifts so into his fictions. Abdulla does ‘go mad’ in prison, where his novel is the anchor to hope, its continuation a something-to-do aside from being interrogated; its figments visit him in prison. But that’s a dance worth risking devils for.
I was frustrated by the translation. For a novel that is about literature, and that celebrates diversity of language, it is a pity that there is no attempt to render the speech ways so important to Qodiriy the narrator. He listens to a fellow prisoner whose speech is ornamented with Persian phrasing, and Qodiriy says he was enchanted not for the content but for the speech – but we have read in plain English, not distinguished from the passages before and after. Nobody wants a dodgy accent, but you can differentiate and you can transport embroidery of words into English. As the translator notes in his afterword, the past and present stories are told in Uzbek’s high and low styles. There is no indication of this distinction in the English prose. I understand we’re to be grateful for English translations out of Uzbek, because there more or less aren’t any. But I can hope another attempt at translation lies in store for this significant novel.