To Hell with Poets

Winner, 2023 English PEN Translates AwardThe first English-language collection from the rising star of a new generation of Kazakh writers.“Baqytgul Sarmekova offers wry, darkly humorous portraits of ordinary Kazakh people held in the snare of patriarchy, cultural tradition, and postsocialist upheaval… Mirgul Kali deftly recreates the atmosphere of these everyday tensions as they quietly seethe just below the surface.” —PEN/Heim judges’ citationVivid, hilarious and unsettling, the tragicomic char