Essays

An essay on Ukrainian literature to mark the one-year anniversary of the war:

The Exuberant Diversity of Ukrainian Literature

A personal essay and review of a wonderful new anthology of Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan drawing on my own travels in Kazakhstan:

The Spirits of Foremothers: On ‘Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan’

An essay celebrating the 50th anniversary of Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book. Is it the most perfect novel ever written?

Perfectly Realized: On Tove Jansson’s ‘The Summer Book’ at 50

An essay on the poet Deborah Digges, focusing on her last posthumously published collection, The Wind Blows through the Doors of my Heart:

A Furnace Fed on Stars: Deborah Digges and the Double-Edged Poetics of Loss

Here is a two-part essay on The Riches of Kazakh Literature that covers most of the contemporary literature from Kazakhstan available in English translation. Part one focuses on fiction, and particulary Talasbek Asemkulov’s masterpiece A Life at Noon:

The Riches of Kazakh Literature Part One: Fiction

Part two of The Riches of Kazakh Literature focuses on poetry, with particular attention to Olzhas Suleimenov and a brilliant young poet, Aigerim Tazhi:

The Riches of Kazakh Literature Part Two: Poetry

A review of Lucy Atkinson’s amazing Recollections of Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants, originally published in 1863, now reissued with a comprehensive introduction that at last clears up many mysteries about this fascinating woman:

Recollections of Tartar Steppes and Their Inhabitants