{"product_id":"the-tale-of-aypi-by-ak-welsapar","title":"The Tale of Aypi by Ak Welsapar","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e“Often drawing on Turkmen folk tales, parables and allegories, his prose incorporates elements of magic realism. As such, Welsapar’s work hints at an escape into a metaphysical world, a magical world, where change is possible. An authorial warmth imbues his writing with the kind of hard-nosed optimism that is only arrived at after enduring great suffering” – The Calvert Journal\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Tale of Aypi\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eholds a singular place in world literature: it is the first novel ever translated directly from Turkmen into English. Written by Ak Welsapar, a writer exiled and blacklisted in his native Turkmenistan since 1990, it won an English PEN Award and appears here in the translation of W.M. Coulson.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the shore of the Caspian Sea, a village of fishermen is ordered to abandon its ancestral home. Fishing, their livelihood, is banned; the land is wanted by the state. Most submit. One man, Araz, refuses, and stands alone against the authorities to fight for his native shore. Woven through his story is the older tale of Aypi, a village beauty put to death three centuries ago, whose wronged spirit now returns to take her revenge on the men who condemned her.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSet in the final years of the Soviet era but speaking directly to the present, the novel binds folklore and political fable, the forces of nature and the machinery of power. “The writing is just amazing,” wrote one reviewer, “and it has a most beautiful ending, tragic, but highly appropriate.” A small, haunting masterpiece, and a rare window onto the literature of Central Asia in English translation.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pushkin House Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57266573148538,"sku":null,"price":18.45,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0510\/3406\/3009\/files\/The-Tale-of-Aypi-by-Ak-Welsapar-Cover.webp?v=1789392428","url":"https:\/\/shop.pushkinhouse.org\/products\/the-tale-of-aypi-by-ak-welsapar","provider":"Pushkin House Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}