The Dead Wander in the Desert

The shrinking of the Aral Sea is arguably the greatest manmade environmental disaster of the 20th century. Kazakh writer Rollan Seisenbayev uses the catastrophe as the backdrop for his novel, exploring the impact on local people through the eyes of a fisherman and his son who are confronted not only with the vanishing sea but as a result also the disappearance of their livelihood and future. The Dead Wander in the Desert was long-listed for the PEN Translation Prize and deserves to be much more widely read. 

A Kazakh novel about the 20th-century killing of the Aral Sea, told from the perspective of its fishing people. Government-made ecological catastrophe, extinction, toxicity, fish and children poisoned. There is no upturn at the end of this true story, only an urgent call to action for the planet. 

Spiritual connection with the lake and rivers spawns the spirit presence in the novel, its epic machinary of gods and monsters: the Father and Mother of Fishes, the evil catfish that swallows people whole; strange, intentional behaviour from the gulls and the steppe animals in protest at human damage. The… show more.