Welcome to Litsy!

Great read. Order from the publisher and support a brilliant small press bringing out translated fiction.

https://www.tiltedaxispress.com/the-devils-dance

The lure of a lost manuscript is one of humanity's eternal temptations. Our ancestor Adam's first poem; the Mushaf of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet; Ibn-Sina's Eastern Logic; Yassawi's secret aphorisms... and these were just the Islamic works. If you included the lost books of other cultures, the list would number thousands, from St Margaret's gospel to the history of Genghis Khan.

Uzbeks have a custom of never calling a scorpion a scorpion: instead, they call it 'the thing with no name'. Was that why they could talk freely about Emirs Nasrullo, Umar and Madali, Shah Dost Muhammad and even Queen Victoria, but wouldn't dare mention his name? The interrogators ... never once let their mouths utter his name. Yet he was the heart and soul, the beginning and the end, of all the things taking place around him.

Abdulla had a game he had invented. When he was going by tram or bus to the city centre, or coming back home towards Xadra Square, he would study the other passengers' faces and imagine them living in different epochs.... Abdulla rarely took his cue from their current profession: the tram driver with the gigantic moustache would be better as a butcher than a cart driver; the ticket inspector with the restless eyes...would have been a pickpocket

It was dark when the car came to a sudden halt and Abdulla lost the thread of his thoughts. They must have arrived at the prison. What had he been thinking about? Oh yes, the five bright-red oranges he hadn't been able to give his children, now left in a house where the lights were out. ... The courtyard was a shade of white tinged with blue, a pure covering still untouched by human feet...

Ebook on sale. But you must start with book one, Out of Istanbul, the series by the author who walked the entire Silk Road. I‘ve only read books one and two so far & loved them. But I have to admit book one made me extremely depressed & sent me into a reading slump. Once he entered the eastern part of Turkey the locals were downright evil to him. It made me so sad that people treated others like that. Spoiler: he did survive to write books 2 & 3.

Interesting and informative. IMHO this book is better than book one of the three book series. Looking forward to book three.

Those of you who read The Possessed and/or a Russian novel for the first quarter of #readingenvyrussia - reminder we are having an online discussion at 2 pm EST today!
Send me an email if you aren't part of the Goodreads group and want a link, my username at gmail.

If you switched course and went with Ukrainian lit, I'd love to have you join us too!

It's time for the first quarter discussion for #readingenvyrussia - the novels. Please send me a message or find the Zoom link in the Goodreads group. It will be May 27th at 2 pm EST.

I know this has been the worst year ever to focus on Russia. If you ended up reading Ukrainian lit instead, feel free to join the discussion. ↘️

#SavvySettings Day 20: perfect for #Skyscraper