Hamid Ismailov

• Aug-2025
• / Literary

A multilayered exploration of poetry, authorship, and digital intelligence by “a writer of immense poetic power” (The Guardian)   “Many paths cross in Ismailov’s beautiful new work -- poetry, history and the infinite imagination. Every p...

• Aug-2021
• / General Fiction

Finalist, Prix Jan Michalski de Littérature 2023 Shortlisted, EBRD Literature Prize 2022 In his latest tragicomedy Hamid Ismailov interrogates the interaction between tradition and modernity, myth and reality. A radio presenter interprets one of ...

• Jan-2020
• / Literary

From Uzbek author-in-exile Hamid Ismailov comes a dark new parable of power, corruption, fraud, and deception. Ismailov narrates an intimate clash of civilizations as he follows the lives of three expatriates living in England. Domrul is a young Turk...

• Oct-2019
• / General Fiction

The intricate new novel from the winner of the EBRD Literature Prize 'Life in exile! May it be cursed. Once you have become a stranger, a stranger you shall remain; you may endeavour to make friends, but the task is a difficult one, full end to end ...

• Mar-2018
• / General Fiction

On New Years' Eve 1938, the writer Abdulla Qodiriy is taken from his home by the Soviet secret police and thrown into a Tashkent prison. There, to distract himself from the physical and psychological torment of beatings and mindless interrogation...

• Feb-2014
• / General Fiction

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 eveni...

• Dec-2013
• / Literary

Named one of the best Russian novels of the 21st Century, The Underground is the unforgettable story of an abandoned mixed-race boy navigating the wondrous and terrifying city of Moscow before the Soviet Union s collapse.
I am Moscow s undergrou...

• Sep-2012
• / Historical

The “reality novel” A Poet and Bin-Laden set in Central Asia at the turn of the 21st century against a swirling backdrop of Islamic fundamentalism in the Ferghana Valley and beyond, gives a first-hand account on the militants and Taliban’s int...

• Aug-2007
• / General Fiction

Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, this compelling novel introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town's alcoholic intellectu...