Well, I’ve retired from blogging, my site is purely for self-promotion now. But I’ll play along here. I was on vacation when I saw this, and like you, I had work reading: The Ghost of Freedom – A History of the Caucasus.

“The Russian Steam Navigation Company began operations in 1857 with a commission from Tsar Alexander II, running routes across the Black Sea to the major Caucasus ports. In 1885 the Transcaucasus railway was opened, joining Baku on the Caspian with Batumi on the Black Sea. Travel no longer required bouncing along in a horse-driven convoy, swatting flies and peeking at the mountains through a phalanx of Cossack or Kabardian outriders.”

It’s more interesting than that excerpt makes it sound…

Jeb – gurl I SO did.

The story closest to me is actually in my lap. I was thinking of posting a review, though it’s not Central Asian, but Caucasian. The book is Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart, recommended to me by a Peace Corps friend and fellow Registan reader. Here we go:

Her face was as powdered as an American doughnut.
“Eh?” I said.
“Golly Burton? KBR? Thirty percent discount for you.”

This is an exchange between the protagonist/narrator Misha Vainberg and an anonymous prostitute outside his penthouse suite in the capital of Absurdistan. She prefers the boys from Halliburton, it seems. Absurdistan seems to be some crazy mix of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, or any other vague Caucasian country. This book is funny, but it definitely qualifies as education through “realistic” [read: mean-spirited] satire, a la Bissel or Packer. There’s nothing apologetic about the cultural warfare between East, West, and in-between. But I’ll save that for the review!

(The book nearest me right now is a phone book. I wouldn’t post that online.)