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Genghis Khan seems to be the rehabilitated man of the new century. In the past few years, a series of historians (Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World), cinematists (Sergei Bodrov's Russian-Kazakh-Mongolian film Mongol), and novelists have re-written (or re-ridden) the story of Temujin, the steppe prince-done-wrong who grew to become an adept political warrior and the creator of a multi-continental empire. Wasn't it not too long ago that we were supposed to fear and revile the bloodthirsty Mongol hordes?Sergei Bodrov's Oscar-nominated Mongol, released last week in New York and Los Angeles and nationwide on June 20, has gotten positive reviews for its epic storytelling and gorgeous vistas. As far as I can tell (not yet having seen it), Mongol follows the same basic storyline as Conn Iggulden's excellent historical novel Genghis: Birth of an Empire, which in turn is heavily based on Genghis Khan's own Secret History of the Mongols. Temujin is the second son of Yesugei, khan of the Wolves, a powerful nomadic tribe. After Yesugei is murdered by Tatars, his bondsman seizes power and turns 12-year-old Temujin, his mother, brothers and infant sister out of the tribe to die in the brutal steppe winter. Denied his birthright of influence and comfort, Temujin's experiences in sheer survival harden him into a man of unflinching practicality and unwavering purpose. Criticism of both film and novel lie in the ways each artist has shaped and turned the facts to suit his storytelling purposes, abandoning strict history whenever necessary. And that is why this medium is called "historical fiction."The reality is that historical fiction (whether visual or written) is as much a reflection of the society in which and for which it was created, as much as it tells the historical truth of its subject. The contemporary reality going here is nation-building, the Central Asian re-creation of self. As in last year's Kazakh cinema epic Nomad, which pushes the idea of a single Kazakh identity forged by a visionary leader, Iggulden's Temujin has a vision of uniting the multitude of steppe tribes and solitary outsiders into a single people. After his escape from captivity and certain death by the treacherous leader of his former clan, Temujin has a recurring dream:"There was only one tribe on the plains. Whether they called themselves Wolves or Olkhun'ut or even tribeless wanderers, they spoke the same language and they were bound in blood. Still, he knew it would be easier to sling a rope around a winter mist than to bring the tribes together after a thousand years of warfare."
Later he proclaims, "I tell you we are one people. We are Mongols . . . We are the silver people, and one khan can lead us all."This Temujin kills and conquers, yet every act has a practical motive. As a child, he murders his own brother, who isn't very admirable anyway, because Bekter's greed threatens the survival of the entire family. He slaughters and eats the flesh of Tatars who had violated his wife, because he had vowed such vengeance to his mother. He is an original thinker, open to new and better ideas, not bound by the way things have always been done. He sees a new kind of body armor, copies it and creates an army of invincible mounted warriors. He is quick to recognize, respect and learn from superior skill. He absorbs former enemies into his Mongol nation, prizing new loyalty and talent over former allegiances. He creates a united Central Asian empire, including all of current Kazakhstan, whose enemies are the Tatars to the north (Russia) and the Chin to the east (China). And if recent DNA studies are accurate, he is the progenitor of 1/12 of the all the men in Asia. After 2 centuries of Russian domination, what's not to like about a genuine homegrown, fabulously successful Central Asian steppe warrior?The beauty of an historical novel is the author's Afterword, where he can explain his sources and tell where strict historical accuracy got sacrificed for the sake of a good story. Iggulden based his novel on the Waley translation of The Secret History of the Mongols. The original Mongolian version has been lost, but a Chinese transcription has survived, and translations of this work provide the earliest written record of Genghis Khan and his exploits. Supposedly commissioned by by Genghis himself, the Secret History is history in the way that the Iliad is a history of the Trojan War -- a mythic epic of larger-than-life heroes, grounded in real people and events.
Coincidentally (or not?), Sergei Bodrov plans a film trilogy, and Genghis: Birth of an Empire is Conn Iggulden's first in a trilogy on the life and empire of the "king of the sea of grass." Genghis: Lords of the Bow was published this spring to starred reviews, continuing the saga as Temujin turns his attention to the empire of the Chin. Bones of the Hills, the final entry in the Conqueror series, is scheduled for U.K. release in the fall (no word on the American publication date). Birth of an Empire was published in the U.K. as Wolf of the Plains. Quite a different image, isn't it?Some folks fuss that historical fiction, with all its inaccuracies, shouldn't be a first experience with important events and lives. I say that, in the hands of a good writer, historical fiction will intrigue and motivate readers to learn beyond the confines of the novel in a way that straight history can't often do. Birth of an Empire is a captivating, thrilling page-turner for teens and adults alike (and a best-seller to boot). How many other books related to Central Asia can claim that??Genghis Khan . . . good guy or bad guy? It's all up to the the writer, and to you, the reader.
Recent reviews of Mongol:
• New York Times
• Christian Science Monitor
• Los Angeles Times
Review of Genghis: Birth of an Empire
• Christian Science Monitor
Excerpt from Chapter One
Author Interview (video)
Author Interview (mp3 audio)
A couple of years ago a neighbor gave me this book/pamphlet containing two clearly Central Asian short stories. My neighbor is a traveller and a thinker, definitely an internationalist, but I have no idea how she came by it. I wasn't even sure it was Kazakh except for the author's name, which has that certain Kazakh-something about it.Since then I have found out that Dukenbai Doszhanov is indeed a Kazakhstani author, and he's been writing for a while. I guess he was Party connected -- these stories were published during the Soviet era and translated into English by a Moscow press (the date on the cover is 1979). Doszhanov (or Doszhan, the Kazakh version now used) is still a high-profile writer. He is editor of the museum journal of the Presidential Center of Culture of Kazakhstan, laureate of the State Prize of RK, a fan and resident of Astana. In 2005 he published a novel, Ak Orda, relating events in the history of Kazakhstan with the main character being President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He has written numerous novels, though I can't find reference to any in English.The Little Jockey contains two stories, "Good Old Granddad Beknur," and the title story. In the first, a young man riding home across the steppe stops at a lonely yurta, and finds an old shepherd he had known as a child. The story ends with "There's nothing dearer to man than than his homeland and countryside."
"The Little Jockey" moves back to the childhood of that same young man.Dalabai has been racing horses since he was six. Now he was ten and had got the hang of it. . . he had been entrusted to ride Kerkiik and defend the honor of the whole district of Karatau.
Starting with "Go!" and ending at the finish line, Dalabai rides the race of his life to hear his father say," You're a worthy son of your great forefathers!"Intrigued? You can download a PDF file (11.5 mb, with colour illustrations) of the title story here.
Duszhenov, D. The Little Jockey (Мальчик-жокей).
Translated by Janette C. Butler; ilustrated by V. Shulzhenko.
Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979.
In June, I broke down and ordered In Search of Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared from Amazon.co.uk, hideous exchange rate, international shipping and all. I'd had my eye on it for months, and still no sign of a US edition in sight. It was worth the trouble. Christopher Robbins (author of Air America and The Empress of Ireland) has written a breezy, affectionate travelogue-style portrait of Kazakhstan, with history and character profiles interspersed among sights and adventures. And don't forget the apples.
The book opens with a portrait of the unnamed man who started Robbins on his quest. On a plane to Moscow, he sits next to a middle-aged American widower, en route to Almaty to meet his Internet fiancee. Naturally, the author knows nothing about Kazakhstan, and his seatmate proudly relates much of what he'd learned about the homeland of his bride-to-be. As they disembarked, the man "turned and made a throwaway remark that seemed insignificant at the time. The last words he addressed to me were, 'Apples are from Kazakhstan.'"
Robbins' travels cover the major areas -- southeast around Almaty, Astana (where he scores a personal interview with President Nursultan Nazerbayev), Karaganda, and the Aral Sea area; west to Atyrau & Baikonur, south to Taraz, and to Semey in the northeast. This is neither a hard-hitting expose, nor a backpacker's view of Kazakhstan. The meeting with Nazarbayev turned into several informal interviews over two years, and many of Robbins' excursions are the result of an invitation to join a presidential touring party. A coup for any writer, but no doubt it colored the author's perspective somewhat. Robbins isn't exactly an apologist for Nazarbayev -- he does acknowledge corruption and scandal in the upper echelons of government -- but he clearly emerges as a fan of the former steelworker who climbed to party boss, then President of a new nation.
Fascinating anecdotal history makes up much of the narrative. While Robbins tramps the southeast in search of wild apple orchards, we learn about the rise and fall of Russian geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, who identified the birthplace of more plants than anyone else in history. In Semey, we read of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's doomed love affair and of the Polygon's nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, who created the Soviets' hydrogen bomb. Trotsky lived in Almaty; in Karaganda, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A long section relates the adventures of Captain Frederick Gustavus Burnaby of the British Army, who in 1875, on a whim, travelled from St. Petersburg across the steppe to Khiva and back again -- in the middle of winter.
This is all great reading, but begins to feel like a litany of things that have been done in and done to Kazakhstan, by outsiders. The real jewels in the book are the portraits of Kazakhstanis, none especially famous, but all fascinating in their lives and achievements:
- Krym Altynbekov in Almaty, the master restorer of almost all the archeological treasures found in Kazakhstan in the past 25 years, including the Golden Man and all the objects found with him;
- Gabit Sagatov in Kyzlorda, the remaining member of the "Kazakh Beatles";
- Boris Gudonov in Karaganda, Ukrainian by birth, who at age 8 was sent into the Gulag with his father, political scapegoat for a mining accident.
- Ykaterina Kuznetsova, a journalist, born in China to Russian parents, and raised in Karaganda, who has dedicated her life to documenting the Kazakh Gulag and the people who inhabited it;
- and the fruit that started it all, the legendary Aport apple, large as a baby's head, once famous throughout the Soviet Union for its scent and flavour, but now "uncool" (though no less delicious), and found only in markets around Almaty.
The book is illustrated with small sketches, including one of that wonderfully goofy ungulate, the saiga, in a discussion of Kazakh wolf overpopulation. Though there are no notes or even an index, it appears to be well researched.
Whether you're headed to KZ for business, adoption or adventure, living in Kazakhstan and wanting a positive, contemporary look at the country for overseas friends, family & colleagues, or an armchair traveller ready to explore, you'll enjoy the engaging writing, range of information, and a level of description and history lacking in the travel and political books. Christopher Robbins likes Kazakhstan. You'll like his book.In Search of Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared. Profile Books, 2007. £12.99
Update: In Search of Kazakhstan was published in the US under the title Apples are from Kazakhstan. Atlas & Co, 2008. $24 (hardcover)
Many of my Central Asian cooking adventures have started with a recipe from Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook, which covers all the republics of the USSR, not just Russia. One really nice thing about this cookbook, in addition to the recipes, is that almost every one has some sort of history or commentary preceding it, and there are longer sections on cooking in the varied Soviet regions (including Central Asia). Even if you never make a thing, you'll enjoy reading the book from cover to cover.If you've ever considered buying your own copy of Please to the Table, here's an opportunity to help kids in Kazakhstan while cooking up some tasty Central Asian treats in your own kitchen. For every copy purchased through Mittens for Akkol, $10 goes to pay for shipping handknit woollies to an orphanage in northeastern KZ.In the pre-Borat era, many (if not most) Americans who could find Kazakhstan on the map, or had even heard of it, were adoptive parents of KZ children. Because of the country’s adoption laws, hopeful parents are required to travel to Kazakhstan and spend at least two weeks of daily visits with a child in the orphanage, before petitioning the regional court to adopt. If the court approves, the child wins a loving family, but his friends are left behind. The majority will remain in state care until at 16 (or after 9th grade) they age out of the system and are on their own.
In 2003, a Cincinnati, Ohio couple adopted two teenagers, aged 12 & 14, from the orphanage in Akkol, a small town about an hour (on a good day) north of Astana. Akkol is unusual in that it cares for children ages from 3-16 years old (most regions have separate orphanages for pre-schoolers, aged 3-7, and school-aged children, aged 8+). In 2004, they travelled to Akkol again, to adopt their son’s 14-year-old best friend. Both times they lived in the orphanage during the visiting period, got to know the directors, the staff, and the children well, and developed the highest regard for the care and commitment the children receive (this is generally true throughout Kazakhstan; if you have to live in an orphanage, your odds are better in RK than in other post-Soviet countries).
How to do something meaningful for the 250 children remaining? As Astana area readers well know, this area is in the windiest, most miserably cold part of the Kazakh steppe. Mittens for Akkol was created to connect knitters to a need -- in the past couple of years, hundreds of pairs of handknit woolen mittens have made their way to the older kids at Akkol, and the project has expanded to socks, vests and other warm woollies. Knitters can join the Mittens for Akkol Yahoo!Group to find out how to participate. Cooks should click on over to the Helping Others: Mittens for Akkol fundraiser page for information on purchasing Please to the Table to help those mittens make the journey from the US to KZ.
And stay tuned to this site for the next installment of Kazakh Cooking Experiments: Lagman for Nauryz (from a Please to the Table recipe, of course).
Several weeks ago, archaeologists published findings of what is believed to be a prehistoric corral, at the Botai settlement of Krasny Yar in Northern Kazakhstan (articles at LiveScience.com and Scientific American.com). Since the only animals in the southern steppe that might have needed a corral would be horses, this discovery is seen as further evidence that the Botai people domesticated and possibly even learned to ride horses as early as 3500 BC.
Though research shows the Botai to have been a completely new kind of civilization from previous steppe peoples, interest and research has been concentrated on their relationship to the wild horses of the steppe, and on what light their civilization can shed on the history of equine domestication. Archeological sites in Ukraine have some evidence of earlier horse domestication (breeding them in captivity as opposed to taming wild horses), ca.5,000 BC, so the question of “who rode first” is a hotly debated topic in contemporary archeology.
The domestication of the horse was a watershed moment in human history -- with a year-round source of meat and milk (as cattle have been in the West), nutrition and migratory patterns of the nomads would have been drastically affected. Once horses were used as tools, for carrying loads, and for travelling long distances when migrating and hunting, the possibilities for human development increased dramatically. Until recently, the Botai have been considered to be Caucasoid/European, but other researchers have used computer modeling to reconstruct a Botai skull, the results of which resemble a modern Kazakh male (the image actually looks a lot like a young Kazakh grad student I know).
Kazakhstan.neweurasia.net has an entry on the recent discoveries, with lots of links to great background research.
With synchronicity factor in full gear, I soon stumbled across a recently published young adult novel called Wind Rider. The author, Susan Williams, has written a richly-imagined tale of the first person, a teenage girl, ever to tame and ride a wild horse in the Central Asian steppe. Young Fern, daughter of a family of hunting and gathering Earth People, finds more comfort in her animal friends than with humans, and is not looking forward to the limited life destined for her as a woman. The five families of her clan travel together during the warm months, and live with other clans in a protected settlement of pit houses during the storms of winter.
One spring, Fern saves the life of an orphaned filly, which she names Thunder. Secretly keeping Thunder in a makeshift corral to protect her from being killed for food, Fern tames the filly and learns to use the young horse’s strength to assist her and her people. In dreams, she has seen herself flying on the back of a horse, and eventually Fern learns to ride Thunder, inventing a leather bridle, bone bits, felt blankets and other riding tools.
This imagined scenario is entirely plausible, and the details are well-researched (as described in the author’s note at the end). For example, the Earth People (Botai?) respect and pay tribute to the life spirits inherent in all things, a possible precursor to the animistic beliefs of pre-Islamic Kazakh nomads. They fear the Night People, a harsh, cruel tribe who worship the god White Horse as master and creator. Night People keep a captured white stallion as the incarnation of White Horse, and to this horse they give ritual sacrifices; there is archaeological and anthropological evidence of horse-worship among the pre-Botai cultures on the steppe.
The novel is well crafted, though the basic story isn’t wildly original. For readers looking for a strong female coming-of-age tale, for all horse-lovers, and anyone interested in Kazakh prehistory, this is a solid recommended read.
For middle graders & up.
More About the Book
• Author Interview with Susan Williams
• Author's Website
• Chapter One Excerpt
More About the Botai Culture
• Prehstory of Kazakhstan at the Carnegie Mellon Museum
• Botai Discovery page (in progress)
Journalist Tom Bissell’s Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghost of Empire in Central Asia, a non-fiction travel history and memoir, turns out to be less about the death of the Aral Sea (shared by Kazakhstan and the NW Uzbekistan region of Karakalpakistan), and more about the culture, politics and history of the people of Uzbekistan. Bissell was an abject failure as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan -- he had a total physical and emotional breakdown and left within the first six months of his tour. Revisiting those ghosts, he returned to Uzbekistan five years later (in 2001) on assignment to write an article about the Aral Sea (his conclusion -- the Uzbek side is a lost cause). Before he ever gets to Karakalpakistan, though, Bissell visits Samarkand, Bukhara, his Peace Corps host family, and makes a side trip through Kyrgystan for the funeral of an Uzbek mountain climber. He ponders on the influence of a fierce and unforgiving environment on the development of bloody and corrupt empires (both past and present). It’s well-written and engaging, with occasional wise observations and laugh-out-loud ironic comments.Though they share a fairly long border, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan do not share the exact same histories. The cultures spread along the Silk Road touched the southern parts of Central Asia, only occasionally moving through what is now Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan was long populated by nomadic groups, moving to the best grazing areas with the seasons. Nomads are notoriously hard to govern -- as Hugh Pope writes in Sons of the Conquerers, you can’t rule (or convert) people you can’t find. Further south, away from the steppes, the people were more settled, which gave rise to cities, trade, science, architecture, more religion and a different kind of literary culture. Even the music has a different sound and purpose -- urban vs. nomadic. But that’s a different book review altogether . . .I’ve been musing on the state of Central Asian scholarship, at least as it is published in English. In the past decade or so (since the fall of the Soviet Union), most research and writing on the region has been done by scholars trained in Soviet studies (Martha Brill Olcott, a fine thinker and scholar, is an example), so their insights and analysis are virtually always from the Russian perspective. A few researchers approach the region from the Islamic or Turkic perspective, either fretting about Islamic fundamentalism, or seeing all speakers of Turkic languages as little cousins of Turkey. A small, but hopefully growing, new breed of Central Asian scholars is emerging. Their interest begins in Central Asia -- from Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan -- and radiates outward from that center. Tom Bissell’s book is an example of this viewpoint. His interest in Central Asia comes solely from his experiences in Uzbekistan, so all of his research, scholarship and writing radiates from that center. Two places for Central Asian-centric thinking are Registan ("All Central Asia, All The Time"), a blog with politics and cultural analysis, originated by a former Peace Corps volunteer to Uzbekistan and current graduate student in Central Asia studies, and The Roberts Report, by a professor of Central Asian Studies at Georgetown University. Recently, another website, KZBlog, has revived, with a focus on culture and daily life (as viewed by an American working long-term in KZ). Politics (however entertaining) are not the focus of News from the Caravan -- check out these sites to keep up on the latest events.
Greetings! After a summer-long hiatus, spent in a state a whole lot greener and only slightly less land-locked than anywhere in Central Asia, I resume. Over the past few months, I’ve vicariously circled around Kazakhstan, having watched a couple of documentary-type films and read a few books, all of which touch on Soviet Central Asian history and/or culture, but not a one of which is about Kazakhstan directly. It’s been fascinating.First, a film and a book --
The National Geographic feature film Story of the Weeping Camel, isn’t exactly a documentary and isn't exactly fiction, but a little of both. It’s filmed in the Mongolian desert, and tells the story of a rare baby white camel that is rejected from birth by its mother. The family of herders try one strategy after another to encourage, teach, trick and cajole the mother camel into caring for the starving and sad baby until at last, traditional Mongolian music and song break through to her stony heart. The daily life and customs of these nomads seems very similar to that of the ethnic Kazakhs, who also live in Mongolia and China in addition to Kazakhstan. The portrayal of the family of nomads -- a cluster of three gers (the Mongolian yurta) houses young parents with two sons, and two sets of grandparents -- makes clear details that are hard to figure out from just words and pictures. How exactly do those flaps on the yurta work? Seeing the father prepare for an impending sandstorm explains all.
10/2/2006 -- National Geographic has a great website for this film, with lots of additional information on the land, people, traditions and animals of the Gobi Desert.
Then north and west to Russia: After a third person said to me "surely you've read The Master and Margarita
," (and I hadn't), I began this satiric novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. What happens when Satan in disguise pays a visit to fervently athiestic Soviet Moscow, and what has Pontius Pilate got to do with it all? Bulgakov began the novel in 1928, burned it (just as the Master burns his manuscript after intense negative criticism), picked it up again in the 1930s, and worked on it off and on 'til his death. His wife finished and polished the novel, which is now regarded as one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century. In a bitingly funny and fantastical way, Bulgakov’s story shreds the pretenses of the Communist literary scene and the immobility of Soviet society, assails the quality of party poetry, and rewards courage and steadfast devotion in his main characters. And it's quite a good read, too.
Next stop, to Uzbekistan, the country that shares the Aral Sea with Kazakhstan, with Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Central Asia, by former Peace Corps volunteer Tom Bissell. More about this fascinating book next time . . .
