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Biography
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250 pages, casebound 229x152mm, Landscape
Recipient of the English PEN Writers in Translation Award 2006 |
ISBN-10: 1905299125 ISBN-13: 9781905299126
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The Silent Steppe, The Story of a Kazakh Nomad Under Stalin
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The Silent Steppe is an enthralling story of a family living through one of the most traumatic periods of Soviet history, as seen through the eyes of a young boy growing up in a family of Kazakh nomads. It encompasses the horrors of political persecution and famine in the 1930s, and culminates in the author's first hand account of the Battle of Stalingrad and his long trek home through freezing winter conditions after being wounded and discharged from the Red Army.
"This is an unusual and special book - the fascinating, tragic, forgotten story of the Kazakh nomads of Central Asia under Stalin's brutal rule". Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of 'Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar' and recipient of the English PEN Writers in Translation Award. |
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| Mukhamet Shayakhmetov - Mukhamet Shayakhmetov was seven years old when the Soviet government's drive to collectivise farming and herding in all forms, including nomadic, reached the vast steppes of Russia's central Asian empire, and specifically east Kazakhstan.
By forcing individual farmers to give up their sheep and cattle
and join agricultural 'brigades', collectivisation brought to an end to the
existence Mukhamet's family and people had led since time immemorial.
Worse, Mukhamet's father was imprisoned as a kulak or 'class enemy', leaving his family stripped of their livestock and possessions and ostracised from society.
Related title(s): A Kazakh Teacher's Story: Surviving the Silent Steppe By Mukhamet Shayakhmetov
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