Review: Tamerlane’s Children

There have been a handful of books published lately that can be considered part of a small “went to work in Central Asia, kept a journal, and made a book from it” genre. Examples include Uzbekistan a Short Road Traveled by William Duncan, Keith Rosten’s Once in Kazakhstan: The Snow Leopard Emerges, Rob Ferguson’s The Devil and the Disappearing Sea, and Unknown Sands by John W. Kropf. Of these four, I have only read Ferguson’s book, though a review copy of Kropf’s is on the way. Ferguson’s book is a memoir of his time working in Uzbekistan, and reads like a straight retelling of his (admittedly fairly interesting). One does not feel immersed in a narrative like those found in the travelers’ accounts of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and though someone like me is not necessarily the target audience for such a book, I did not feel like I came away with too much new information.

Robert Rand’s Tamerlane’s Children: Dispatches from Contemporary Uzbekistan, though somewhat in this genre, is a different creature altogether from Ferguson’s book. Rand lived and worked in Uzbekistan between August 2001 and November 2004 as a writer and freelance journalist. He left for Uzbekistan, he says “as a trailing spouse,” following his wife who took up a position with the United Nations in Tashkent.

Tamerlane’s Children is divided into two sections. The first consists of seven journalistic chapters covering topics and personalities such as love in Uzbekistan, cotton, Amir Timur, and Sevara Nazarkhan. The second part tries to capture what it was like living in Uzbekistan and is compiled from Rand’s personal diary, his reporter’s notebooks, and interview transcripts. The book wraps up with a chapter on Andijon and a look at the future. The book strikes a good balance between the personal and the informative, and, though it may sound weird coming from me, may be worth picking up solely for conversation with Craig Murray. But even if Murray’s not enough to motivate you, Tamerlane’s Children is worth picking up as a snapshot of life in contemporary Uzbekistan.

Tamerlane’s Children is available at Amazon and surely in good bookstores if you are so lucky as to have one of those around.

This post was written by...

Nathan Hamm – author of 2974 posts on Registan.net.

Nathan is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Registan.net, which he launched in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with private and government clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural and political factors shape risks and opportunities and how organizations can adjust their strategic and operational plans to account for these variables. Nathan is currently seeking research, analysis, and consulting opportunities. He can be contacted via Twitter or email.

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