First Uzbek novel translated into English lands €20,000 prize

Hamid Ismailov’s The Devils’ Dance, ‘an Uzbek Game of Thrones’ initially published on Facebook, takes the EBRD literature prize

The first novel to be translated from Uzbek into English, an “Uzbek Game of Thrones” that is banned in the author’s home country and was initially published in Facebook posts, has won the €20,000 (£17,200) EBRD literature prize.

Hamid Ismailov’s The Devils’ Dance intertwines the stories of two central Asian writers: the 19th-century Uzbek poet Oyxon, a slave who was forcibly married to three khans, and the author Abdulla Qodiriy, who was writing her story when he was imprisoned by Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, in 1937.

Related: The Devils’ Dance by Hamid Ismailov review – a landmark Uzbek novel

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