The Dead Lake

Description

LONG-LISTED FOR THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE 2015 ------- LONG-LISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2016 ------ INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014 -------- GUARDIAN READERS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014 ------- A haunting Russian tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War. Yerzhan grows up in a remote part of Soviet Kazakhstan where atomic weapons are tested. As a young boy he falls in love with the neighbour's daughter and one evening, to impress her, he dives into a forbidden lake. The radioactive water changes Yerzhan. He will never grow into a man. While the girl he loves becomes a beautiful woman. ------ Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'Like a Grimm's fairy tale, this story transforms an innermost fear into an outward reality. We witness a prepubescent boy's secret terror of not growing up into a man. We also wander in a beautiful, fierce landscape unlike any other we find in Western literature. And by the end of Yerzhan's tale we are awe-struck by our human resilience in the face of catastrophic, man-made, follies.' Meike Ziervogel, Publisher

Reviews

'A haunting and resonant fable.' Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT ------ 'A tantalising mixture of magical and grim realism ... a powerful study of alienation and environmental catastrophe.' David Mills, SUNDAY TIMES ------ 'A poetic masterpiece, a novella of shocking legacies, alien beauty and blistering emotional intensity.' Pam Norfolk, LANCASHIRE EVENING POST ------ 'A writer of immense poetic power.' Kapka Kassabova, GUARDIAN ------ 'A novella which draws on myth, fairy tale, poetry and traditional story-telling, it stirs them together to create an unusual parable of a modern arms race cruelly impacting on a traditional way of life.' Elizabeth Buchan, DAILY MAIL ------ 'This superb novella ... reads like a modern fairy-tale, full of a surreal yet mundane horror.' Lesley McDowell, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY ------ 'Central Asian storytelling at its best.' Marion James, TODAY'S ZAMAN

Author description

Born in 1954 in Kyrgyzstan, Hamid Ismailov moved to Uzbekistan as a young man. He writes both in Russian and Uzbek and his novels and poetry have been translated into many European languages, including German, French and Spanish. In 1994 he was forced to flee to the UK because of his 'unacceptable democratic tendencies'. He now works for the BBC World Service. The Railway was his first novel to be published in English in 2006, followed by A Poet and Bin-Laden in 2012. His work is still banned in Uzbekistan today.