{"product_id":"googling-for-soul-a-novel-in-short-stories-by-hamid-ismailov","title":"Googling for Soul: A Novel in Short Stories by Hamid Ismailov","description":"\u003cp class=\"PDq2pG_selectionAnchorContainer\" data-start=\"929\" data-end=\"1198\"\u003e\u003cem data-start=\"929\" data-end=\"948\"\u003eGoogling for Soul\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a novel in eleven interconnected stories by acclaimed Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov. Moving between villages and cities, generations and languages, the book follows people trying to understand who they are in a world repeatedly reshaped by history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1203\" data-end=\"1649\"\u003eA sculptor who has spent forty years in a northern capital receives a phone call from a nephew he has never met and must decide whether to save him or send him home. A village schoolteacher retires just as the country changes its name around him. A boy who would rather be Ramón than Rahmon picks up a guitar. In the title story, a stranger writes to translator Robert Chandler, and the letter becomes a search for identity, memory and belonging.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1654\" data-end=\"2050\"\u003eIsmailov writes with wit and restraint about lives caught between the village and the metropolis, tradition and modernity, the language people inherit and the one in which they imagine another life. Though composed of individual stories,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-start=\"1892\" data-end=\"1911\"\u003eGoogling for Soul\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003egradually reveals itself as something much closer to a novel: a portrait of Uzbekistan and its people, scattered yet connected by history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"2055\" data-end=\"2172\"\u003eFor readers of contemporary literary fiction, literature in translation and writing from Uzbekistan and Central Asia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"2055\" data-end=\"2172\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePaperback\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pushkin House Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57551942549882,"sku":null,"price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0510\/3406\/3009\/files\/Googling-for-Soul-Cover_1.webp?v=1794408155","url":"https:\/\/shop.pushkinhouse.org\/products\/googling-for-soul-a-novel-in-short-stories-by-hamid-ismailov","provider":"Pushkin House Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}