Three Karakalpak Poets: Berdaq, Ajiniyaz, Ibrayim Yusupov - Paperback

by Gulbahar Izentaeva (Translator), Shaxnoza Kengesbay Qizi (Translator), Aynura Nazirbaeva (Translator)

"Three Karakalpak Poets" is an English translation of selected poems by the founding fathers of Karakalpak literature, Berdaq (1827-1900) and Ajiniyaz (1824-1878), and the modern Karakalpak poet Ibrayim Yusupov (1929-2008). It brings one of the great Central Asian literatures, which draws on both folk poetry and classical Turkic-Persian poetry, to an English-speaking audience for the first time. The selection includes extracts from Berdaq's "Chronicles", his legendary history of the Karakalpak people, Ajiniyaz's "Bozataw", about the suppression of the 1858-1859 Qonirat uprising, and Yusupov's "Aral Elegies", his sequence of environmental poems about the Aral Sea becoming a desert. The translations are by the English poet Andrew Staniland with the help of Karakalpak co-translators Gulbahar Izentaeva, Shaxnoza Kengesbay qizi, Aynura Nazirbaeva, Nilufar Bayrambaevna Abdullaeva, Nargiza Urazimbetova and Gulnaz Jadigerova.