The Dead Lake

"This year I discovered Peirene Press, a London publisher who sends me a work of translated European fiction every four months in exchange for an annual subscription. The first book sent was Hamid Ismailov’s melancholy tale of nuclear testing and an environment so damaged that it can no longer nourish life. The story begins on a train journey, and from the first page this lyrical love song to Kazakhstan and its people is deeply affecting — journeys on horseback across the steppes; long, cold winter nights. It is a book that makes the reader want to sing her own praise song in gratitude for the journeys translation allows us to make."