MECACS Reads Issue #2

Tuesday 14 March 2023

Collated by MECACS Intern Vittoria Gattini

MECACS reads is a monthly blog post and newsletter devoted to literature on the Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia regions. Through this initiative, we would like to offer stimulating suggested reading that is not necessarily academic in nature but may pertain to elements of politics and culture.

We aim to offer two recommendations for each region in every issue.

Middle East

Wadjda ( وجدة ) Dir. Haifaa al-Mansour, 2012, (Saudi Arabia) – Available on PrimeVideo and Mubi

This is the first Saudi movie written and directed by a woman in which a rebellious Saudi girl (Waad Mohammed) enters a Koran recitation competition at her school and hopes to win enough money to buy her own bicycle. Al-Mansour’s screenplay was influenced by neorealist cinema such as Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, Jafar Panahi’s Offside and the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta. (from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadjda)

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi, 2003 (Iran)

The book consists of a memoir of the author’s experiences about returning to Iran during the revolution (1978–1981) and living under the Islamic Republic of Iran government until her departure in 1997. It narrates her teaching at the University of Tehran after 1979, her refusal to submit to the rule to wear the veil and her subsequent expulsion from the University, life during the Iran–Iraq War, her return to teaching at the University of Allameh Tabatabei (1981), her resignation (1987), the formation of her book club (1995–97), and her decision to emigrate.

(from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran)

Caucasus

Blue Mountains Dir. Eldar Shengelaia, 1983, (Georgia) – Available for free at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9-qjr_GBGY

A writer submits his newest manuscript ‘Blue Mountains or Tian Shan’ to a publishing house to be read, only to be fobbed off by the employees with increasingly Kafkaesque levels of absurdity in Georgian director Eldar Shengelaia’s irresistible lampoon of stagnant, callous and petty bureaucracy.

(from BFI https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-classic-films-russia-caucasus-central-asia)

The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva, 2012 (Dagestan)

Touted as the first Dagestani novel to be published in English, Alisa Ganieva’s The Mountain and the Wall offers a penetrating exposition on how to keep living in the face of destruction. The novel follows Shamil, a young and apathetic reporter in Makhachkala as the Russian government threatens to build a wall isolating the Muslim areas of the Caucasus. 

(from The Calvert Journal https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/8052/caucasian-literature-best-contemporary-fiction-reading-list)

Central Asia

Svet-ake Dir. Aktan Arym Kubat, 2010 (Kyrgyzstan). Available for free at https://youtu.be/aLnB1ISU26M

Our main character Svet-Ake, or Mr. Light, is the local electrician in an extremely impoverished, underfunded Kyrgyz town. He tries his best to be the man of the people who, in a robin hood fashion, manipulates the electric meters for those who cannot afford to pay for their electricity. Even with this, he sees that more and more townspeople are leaving the town in search of better jobs, threatening the town’s tradition and way of life.

(from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_Thief)

A Life at Noon, by Talasbek Asemkulov 2003 (Kazakhstan)

This is an autobiographical novel by a man who is best known in Kazakhstan for his music. He has helped to revive and sustain the traditional of playing küy on the dombra. You can hear samples of the author’s playing here and here.

(from The Modern Novel https://www.themodernnovel.org/asia/central-asia/kazakhstan/talasbek-asemkulov/a-life-at-noon/)

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