Book of Words by Abay Kunanbayev
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Book of Words is a collection of 45 short essays by Abay Kunanbayev (1845 – 1904), one of Kazakhstan’s preeminent men of letters. Abay is known both as a poet and philosopher. This book includes more prose philosophy than poetry, though it does contain a few lines in verse.
I picked this book up while traveling in Kazakhstan. It should be noted that much of the book is a rant against the Kazakhs of Abay’s day. The book advocates for individuals to be both more scholarly, more virtuous, and more piously religious, and it skewers Kazakhs as simpletons who only care about the size and state of their livestock herds and the wealth that said herds can bring them. It’s eloquently written, but there’s not much more to it than that. With his Book of Words, Abay is trying to goad the Kazakh’s into being more virtuous and well-read. Judging from both the prominence of his name in Almaty (a huge statue, a major road, and one of the Metro stops named for him) and the success seen in Almaty, many Kazakhs probably took his words to heart.
There was a forward by someone named Nursultan Umbetov who is living, but far less famous (internationally, at least) than Kunanbayev. However, that front matter is the only ancillary matter for the edition I read. It does have explanatory footnotes where necessary to clarify something that wouldn’t make sense to non-Kazakhs.
If you want to gain insight into Kazakh culture, and how it’s changed since the 19th century, this book is worth reading. Much of the book may be viewed as trite truisms rather than earth-shattering wisdom, but it’s concise and well-articulated.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 
Trust me Kazakhs have not learned since then 🙂 he was right, we still are largely like he describes. There are bright spots of course. Russians sort of left us no choice under the Soviet rule and dragged us from nomadism to whatever settled white people imagine is civilisation. Are we better off now? Who knows.
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Interesting. Thanks for the insight.
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Hi there! I’m a phd student of reception of Abai’s creativity and am curios like why did you choose Abai? Like how you arrived at exactly Abai? I’m collecting material for my research and any information would help me. Thanks!
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Knowing nothing about Kazakh literature, I did a Google search. This author’s name came up prominently in lists of literary figures. So, at that point I had a few names. The next cuts were: a.) has this author’s work been translated into English? and b.) what was available via my local Amazon portal (which, at the time and presently, is India?) [Sometimes, I do buy books in country, but that’s often a challenge (or very expensive or heavy for luggage) where English is at best a tertiary language, and — also — whenever possible I like to read ahead of time as that is largely the point — to get insight into a country I’m visiting.]
In short: 1.) well regarded / prominent => has works translated to English => could be bought online in India.
I will say that this is not my usual travel read. Not that it wasn’t good, but as I mentioned I aim for literature that offers many insights into the indigenous culture, preferably at the moment. This — being an older work and poetry — doesn’t necessarily do that as well as, say, a literary fiction novel set in recent years.
I should point out that this was several years ago now. If I were planning the trip today, there’s a good chance that I’d land on some other work entirely because the pace at which books are being translated is on the rise in many places and what is ending up on online stores is also on the rise. e.g. in 2012 it was impossible to find a book for Thailand that wasn’t by an expat or foreigner and in the form of gritty crime novel, but now I’m spoiled for choice on literary fiction published by Thais.
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