The Dead Lake

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A haunting Russian tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War Yerzhan grows up in a remote part of Kazakhstan where the Soviets tests atomic weapons As a young boy he falls in love with the neighbour s daughter and one evening, to impress her, he dives into a forbidden lake The radio active water changes Yerzhan He will never grow into a man While the girl he loves becomes a beautiful woman Like a Grimm s Fairy tale, this story transforms an innermost fear into an outward reality We witness a prepubescent boy s secret terror of not growing up into a man We also wander in a beautiful, fierce landscape unlike any other we find in Western Literature And by the end of Yerzhan s tale we are awe struck by our human resilience in the face of catastrophic, man made, follies Meike Ziervogel, Peirene Press Best Download [ The Dead Lake ] author [ Hamid Ismailov ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr Ominous and timely, when you think about our own man who never grew up s plans to destroy our water.This was an impressive tale of a young boy and his family living next to the railway station and a nuclear bomb testing area.I was drawn in by the narration, trying to solve the mystery of the young man s history and the style of the narration.Hamid Ismailov s The Dead Lake is the first in Peirene s Coming of Age Towards Identity series It was first published in Russia in 2011, and as with all of the Peirene titles, this is its first translation into English Andrew Bromfield has done a marvellous job in this respect, and it goes without saying that the book itself is beautiful.The author s own life is worth mentioning in this review Hamid Ismailov was born in Kyrgyzstan, and moved to Uzbekistan when he was a young man In 1994, he Hamid Ismailov s The Dead Lake is the first in Peirene s Coming of Age Towards Identity series It was first published in Russia in 2011, and as with all of the Peirene titles, this is its first translation into English Andrew Bromfield has done a marvellous job in this respect, and it goes without saying that the book itself is beautiful.The author s own life is worth mentioning in this review Hamid Ismailov was born in Kyrgyzstan, and moved to Uzbekistan when he was a young man In 1994, he was forced to move to the United Kingdom ...Dec 2014 The joy of the steppe, the joy of music and the joy of childhood always coexisted in Yerzhan with the anticipation of that inescapable, terrible, abominable thing that came as a rumbling and a trembling, and then a swirling , sweeping tornado from the Zone.Two families still living the ways of ancient Kazakh culture coexist alongside Soviet nuclear testing, one son a musical prodigy I found the themes and the telling enthralling, and this is by far the best of the Peirene novellas I ve Dec 2014 The joy of the steppe, the joy of music and the joy of childhood always coexisted in Yerzhan with the anticipation of that inescapable, terrible, abominable thing that came as a rumbling and a trembling, and then a swirling , sweeping tornado from the Zone.Two families still living the ways of ancient Kazakh culture coexist alongside Soviet nuclear testing, one son a musical prodigy I found the themes and the telling enthralling, and this is by far the best of the Peirene novellas I ve read.The others, to one extent or another, had that bloodless brittleness of style characteristic of much Eng lang literary fiction, and although they are pretty good, took many times longer to read than the concept two hour books to be devoured in a single sitting which is one o...Velmi p jmen jednohubka Trochu m mrz , e ten konec nebyl pln uzav en , ale i tak m to chytlo a nepustilo.An astonishing tale tinged with sadness,recounted by Yerzhan to a stranger on a train journey, that is in part imagined by the listener.Yerzhan grows up at a railway siding, where two families live, their livesintertwined than appears on the surface Every so often the ground shakes, another sun rises and everything is still Then there is the Zone, that area where it is so silent, his ears ring.Yerzhan learns the violin and is bright, but the real light in his life is Aisula, a light that An astonishing tale tinged with sadness,recounted by Yerzhan to a stranger on a train journey, that is in part imagined by the listener.Yerzhan grows up at a railway siding, where two families live, their livesintertwined than appears on the surface Every so often the ground shakes, another sun rises and everything is still Then there is the Zone, that area where it is so silent, his ears ring.Yerzhan learns the violin and is bright, but the real light in his life is Aisula, a light that gradually fades upon his reaching the age of 12, when he walks into the forbidden Dead Lake to impress her and from that day stops growing, destined to watch her pass him And the thing that loomed over him like a visceral fear could happen in the middle of the sweltering summer, when sheep suddenly started bleating as if they were under the knife and went dashing in all directions, cows dug their horns into...This is an astonishing novella which at 122 pages is full of lyricism and poetry, traditional tales, music and the modern day horror of nuclear testing An intro tells the reader that from 1949 to 1989 468 nuclear explosions were tested in a test site in the Kazakh steppes This story tells of Yerzhan a 27 year old man who looks like a 12 year old boy whom the narrator meets on a train selling yoghurt and playing his violin He then tells the story of his and his families exposure to nuclear rad This is an astonishing nove...Hauntingly beautiful writing, even when reporting the horrific.Whilst on a train journey across Kazakhstan, the narrator meets Yerzhan, a twenty seven year old itinerant peddler and virtuoso violinist who, strangely, has the looks and build of a boy of twelve years After overcoming his initial diffidence, Yerzhan starts to recount the tale of his childhood He recalls growing up in a two family settlement on a lonely, remote railway outpost in the Kazakh steppes, close to a top secret Zone where Soviet nuclear experiments were carried out He tells of hi Whilst on a train journey across Kazakhstan, the narrator meets Yerzhan, a twenty seven year old itinerant peddler an...In a Zweig like framing device, the story is told in the course of a train journey through Kazakhstan The story involves a boy growing up in an isolated location close to a Soviet nuclear testing site, and the effect this has on him and his family, as they nevertheless continue with their lives schooling, friendship, musical talent, farming Tragedy strikes early in the boy s life after a dip in a toxic lake causes him to stop growing meanwhile, by contrast, his uncle insists on the Soviet p In a Zweig like framing device, the story is told in the course of a train journey through Kazakhstan The story involves a boy growing up in an isolated location close to a Soviet nuclear testing site, and the effect this has on him and his family, as they nevertheless continue with their lives schooling, friendship, musical talent, farming Tragedy strik...

The Dead Lake
  • English
  • 07 October 2018
  • Paperback
  • 128 pages
  • 1908670142
  • Hamid Ismailov
  • The Dead Lake