Laurence Deonna

Travels Through Kazakhstan: After the Fall of the Soviet Empire Laurence Deonna

A vibrant account, enthralling from start to finish. (La Croix, Paris); Investigative journalism with the talent of a storyteller. (Elle, Paris); The famous Geneva-based reporter has returned with a mountain of memories and sketches of one engaging character after another. (Tribune de Genève, Geneva). This excellent piece of travel writing takes us on a bitter-sweet tour of Kazakhstan, providing us with a trove of fascinating stories about this former Soviet Socialist Republic's quest for identity since its independence in 1991. This troubled nation is the ninth largest in the world and yet it has only 16 million inhabitants. Its oil resources are such that OPEC predicts that by 2015 Kazakhstan's oil production will equal Saudi Arabia's. The author's keen photographic eye picks up every detail. From the old capital Almaty to the brand new capital Astana. From the environmental catastrophe of the Aral Sea to the tragic consequences of Soviet former nuclear testing in Semipalatinsk. We are treated to the country's ever-changing landscapes and steppes, as well as the many faces and destinies of its peoples. We hear from the poor, who speak with nostalgia of the life they once knew in communist days. We meet born-again believers in "ethnic purity", Russians who no longer belong in Kazakhstan, German survivors of Stalin's gulags, Jews who just landed from Brooklyn, Uigurs dreaming of independence . . . Deonna also draws a telling portrait of a neo-feudal president, and describes the resurgence of Islam in Central Asia.