95 books like A Carpet Ride to Khiva

In the 1990s when I worked at the British Embassy in Moscow organising social functions I met a kind, elderly, white-haired man who came to visit the ambassador. Sir Fitzroy Maclean was a distinguished former diplomat, war veteran, politician, and writer, but still he found time to chat with a lowly staff member about Soviet history – and when he got home, he sent me his book. Eastern Approaches is a captivating memoir of Maclean’s diplomatic service in the USSR during Stalin’s Terror, when he sneaked undercover into Central Asia and experienced many escapades, including run-ins with the Soviet secret police. His tales of derring-do evoke a bygone age – but his expressive portrayals of the people and landscapes of Central Asia are recognisable to anyone travelling in this alluring region today. 

This beautifully-crafted memoir beginning in 1930s Soviet-ruled Kazakhstan inspired me to seek out a survivor of the famine that tore through the land and left over a million Kazakhs dead during that traumatic decade. I found a feisty nonagenarian who recounted how she walked from Kazakhstan to China at the age of six to find food. Shayakhmetov’s book charts the famine and the accompanying destruction of the nomadic lifestyle the Kazakhs had led for generations until the iron fist of Soviet rule came crashing down. He lyrically evokes his carefree childhood as the son of nomadic herders, which came to an abrupt end when the Soviets seized their herds, corralled them into collective farms, and shot his father. Harrowing, but uplifting too – a story of survival against the odds.

The exquisite blue-domed mosques and madrasahs in the fabled Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara took my breath away when I first visited them while living in Uzbekistan in the early 2000s. But behind this dazzling façade lay an ugly truth: the persecution of thousands of Muslims incarcerated, tortured, demonised, and dehumanised for the crime of being too pious for the liking of Islam Karimov, the paranoid dictator who ruled for a quarter of a century. Bukharbayeva tracks down victims of these atrocities to give a voice to the voiceless, aiming to show the “real people behind the terrible but cold and faceless statistics of human rights abuses.” In this important chronicle that records this repression for posterity, written with passion and oozing with empathy, she succeeds beyond measure.

Socialist realism meets magic realism in this novel by Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, which took me by surprise when I came across it just over a decade after its publication in 1980. The Soviet literature I had read was staid, but this pushed the boundaries of both literary style and censorship. In parallel plots, a railway worker marches with his camel and dog across the Kazakh steppe to bury his friend, while two cosmonauts blast into space and go visiting extra-terrestrials. The themes are way ahead of the book’s time, touching on taboos such as Stalin’s repressions and even hinting at climate change: the extra-terrestrial planet is plagued by a cosmic version of global warming. A quirky tour de force that conjures up the spirit of Soviet-era Central Asia.

Tragically little Central Asian literature has been translated into English: Hamid Ismailov’s books are notable exceptions. The Devils’ Dance won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize, and it was the first time an Uzbek writer was awarded a major international prize. It is the desire to see more writers like Hamid be able to bring their books to global audiences that prompted me to co-found the Silk Road Literary Festival.  

Alisher Navoiy is regarded as the father of the Uzbek language: he was the first person to use Chagatai (the forerunner of modern Uzbek) as a literary language, and he’s Uzbekistan’s national poet. English romantic poet Andrew Staniland, who has translated many of Navoiy’s poems, wrote A New Diwan after his first visit to Uzbekistan. It’s a collection of 84 short poems written in long couplets, inspired by Navoi’s original writing and by the wonders of the Silk Road cities.

Manley’s beautifully written, insightful book focuses on one of the greatest feats of World War II: the Soviet evacuation, one step ahead of the Wehrmacht’s lightening advance, of up to 25 million people, along with the industrial base. Evacuation not only saved millions, but made possible the construction of a new industrial base outside the reach of German bombers. Manley follows over 100,000 citizens to Tashkent, a major destination city in Central Asia. She vividly brings to life the long difficult journeys of evacuees and refugees and their struggles to find work, food, and housing in a city flooded by people in flight. She reveals the conflicts that emerged between those who remained under occupation and those who left, between refugees and evacuees, and between new arrivals and those who sheltered them. Her book not only chronicles an epic exodus but also offers an incisive analysis of the political… show more.

William McKeen’s account of the evolution of 1960s–1970s Key West reads like a novel. Based largely on his interviews with Tom Corcoran (who was there then and knew everybody), McKeen tells the wild tales of some of Key West’s most eccentric and now famous characters from that era, like Tennessee Williams, Thomas McGuane, Margot Kidder, Jim Harrison, Hunter Thompson, and Jimmy Buffett.

Family is not just a metaphor- it resides in a physical place, and that place is home. I found this book extremely valuable because it takes an anthropological approach to the meaning of home, exploring the sociological, historical, and even scientific reasons why home is so fundamental to the human condition. The image of a hearth stands out most from this book: that the most fundamental way for humans to make food - fire - created the foundation for viewing home as a place that is crucial to our nourishment and flourishing. This basic aspect of human survival led to a space of protection, peace, comfort, and security- a home. And where there is home, there is family.

This book of speculative short fiction includes some of the best queer representation I've seen in ages. "A Silly Love Story" includes a gender-fluid character named Merion, and "Before We Disperse Like Star Stuff" includes a trans grad student named Min. Cipri manages to combine the surreal and illogical with a pervasive sense of warmth and humanity, which is a nearly impossible feat, and they make it look easy. Each story will leave you wondering what happens next, but the characters will also live on in your imagination long after you've turned the page.