Eldar Sattarov is a contemporary writer from

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

. He was born in 1973 in

Almaty Almaty (; kk, Алматы; ), formerly known as Alma-Ata ( kk, Алма-Ата), is the List of most populous cities in Kazakhstan, largest city in Kazakhstan, with a population of about 2 million. It was the capital of Kazakhstan from 1929 to ...

of a

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

father and a

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

mother. In the early 1990s he sang in the first punk rock bands of his country. Former factory worker and then journalist, he started translating and writing in 2000. The books he translated from English, French, Spanish and Italian published in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

include authors as diverse as

Guy Debord Guy-Ernest Debord (; ; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationis ...

Raoul Vaneigem Raoul Vaneigem (; born 21 March 1934) is a Belgian writer known for his 1967 book ''The Revolution of Everyday Life''. He was born in Lessines ( Hainaut, Belgium) and studied romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 195 ...

Antonin Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the E ...

Francisco Ferrer Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia (; January 14, 1859 – October 13, 1909), widely known as Francisco Ferrer (), was a Spanish radical freethinker, anarchist, and educationist behind a network of secular, private, libertarian schools in and aroun ...

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( , ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitics ( ...

Jacques Camatte Jacques Camatte (born 1935) is a French writer and former Marxist theoretician and member of the International Communist Party, a primarily Italian left communist organisation under the influence of Amadeo Bordiga. After Bordiga's death and ...

etc. Sattarov's first novel, ''Losing Our Streets'', about teenage street gangs and drug addiction in the 1980s

, published in 2010, was sold in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

and

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

, generating positive feedback from literary critics and readership. His second book, ''Transit. Saigon-Almaty'', published in Kazakhstan in 2015 and later re-published in Russia under a new title ''Chao Vietnam'' in 2018, a historical novel about Indochina wars, was short-listed for the National Bestseller award in Russia and took the second place in the final, making Sattarov the first ever

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

n author to enter the final of Russia's major literary award since the dissolution of the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. His third novel ''The Thread of Time'' dedicated to a journey of the left-wing idea in the XX century from

Antonio Gramsci Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a ...

and

Amadeo Bordiga Amadeo Bordiga (13 June 1889 – 25 July 1970) was an Italian Marxist theorist, revolutionary socialist, founder of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI), member of the Communist International (Comintern) and later a leading figure of the Interna ...

through

situationists The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

and up to the author's personal meetings with

Gilles Dauvé Gilles Dauvé (pen name Jean Barrot; born 1947) is a French political theorist, school teacher, and translator associated with left communism and the contemporary tendency of communization. Biography In collaboration with other left communists ...

and

, has gained him a reputation of a "Russia's

Jello Biafra Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), known professionally as Jello Biafra, is an American singer, spoken word artist and politician. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys. Initially ac ...

". The novel ends with a prophecy about " potential death of capital". Apart from Russian, Sattarov also writes in English. His short story "Mountain Maid" was published in Singapore and UK, as a part of "Eurasian Monsters" collection edited by Margret Helgadottir. Currently lives between

Kazan Kazan ( ; rus, Казань, p=kɐˈzanʲ; tt-Cyrl, Казан, ''Qazan'', IPA: ɑzan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and the Kazanka rivers, covering a ...

(Russia) and

(Kazakhstan).An interview with Eldar Sattarov
by

Radio Russia Radio Rossii (russian: Радио России, ''Radio of Russia'') is the primary public radio station in Russia. History Radio Rossii began broadcasting on December 10, 1990. The radio station is part of the state-owned unitary enterprise ...

In August 2022 Sattarov stated in his interview to the Kazakh channel "Abai TV" that in January of the same year he had signed a contract in Moscow for his fourth novel “The Stooges”, dedicated to the global oil & gas market, however its publication was suspended (as well as the first paper edition of a book by

in Russian translated by Sattarov from French and contracted with the same publishing house) due to a crisis caused by the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sattarov, Eldar 1973 births Living people Kazakhstani male writers Kazakhstani people of Vietnamese descent Kazakhstani people of Tatar descent Kazakhstani journalists 20th-century Kazakhstani writers Kazakhstani translators Kazakhstani expatriates in Russia 20th-century Kazakhstani male singers 21st-century Kazakhstani writers

See also

References