Of Strangers and Bees

East meets West in a modern Sufi parable about the search for truth 'Learned, strange and charming.' -- The Guardian In the latest thrilling multi-stranded epic from the award-winning author of The Devils' Dance, an Uzbek writer in exile follows in the footsteps of the medieval polymath Avicenna, who shaped Islamic thought and science for centuries. Waking from a portentous dream, Uzbek writer Sheikhov is convinced that Avicenna still lives. Condemned to roam the world. Avicenna appears across the ages, from Ottoman Turkey to medieval Germany and Renaissance Italy. Sheikhov plies the same route, though his troubles are distinctly modern as he endures the petty humiliations of exile. Hamid Ismailov has crafted another masterpiece, combining traditional oral storytelling with contemporary global fiction to create a modern Sufi parable about the search for truth and wisdom.

Hamid Ismailov is an Uzbek writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 due to what the state dubbed 'unacceptable democratic tendencies'. He came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service. His works are banned in Uzbekistan. Several of his Russian-original novels have been published in English translation, including The Railway (Vintage, 2007) ,The Dead Lake, which was long listed for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and The Underground (both Restless Books). The Devils' Dance was the first of his Uzbek language novels to appear in English, and won the EBRD Prize in 2019.