2023/2024

Alisa Ganieva

Writer

Almaty, Kasachstan

Born in 1985 in Moscow
Studied Creative Writing at Maxim Gorky Literature Institute

Arbeitsvorhaben

Phantasmal Republic, a Novel

Some social movements arise casually and inadvertently, sprouting up from a joke, a slip of a tongue, a momentary sentiment that suddenly acquires life and energy of their own. While toying with reminiscences of The Mountainous Republic, a partially recognized state that blinked on the territory of the North Caucasus just for a few years during the Russian civil war of 1917–1922, a group of friends couldn’t expect that their light talks would crawl from under their control to extend and grow into a real power carrying along characters of different social strata, genders, ethnicities, and worldviews.
Narrated from the perspective of a middle-aged divorced woman, a teacher of Dagestani literature struggling with the patriarchal pressure of her own family, a story of ideas that escape their creators and start a journey of their own, intermingles with a myriad of other stories about battles of individuals and a state, a person and a society, experiments and traditions, law and enterprise.
The Mountainous Republic was a concept of a secular union of numerous Caucasian peoples that for a brief moment won its way in the historical clash of different visions of the region’s future after the Bolshevik coup. A contest among the Sharia Islamic groups, reactionary imperialistic groups, and leftist and Bolshevist groups that took place right after the dismantling of the Russian Empire, a tangle of Turkish, German, and British influences – all that suddenly reemerges in the present revealing the relevancy of almost the same choice for today.

Recommended Reading

Ganieva, Alisa. Prazdničnaja gora. Moscow: AST, 2012. English: The Mountain and the Wall. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum, 2015. German: Die russische Mauer. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014.
—. Ženich i nevesta. Moscow: AST, 2015. English: Bride and Groom. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum, 2018. German: Eine Liebe im Kaukasus. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016.
—. Oskorblennye čustva. Moscow: AST, 2018. English: Offended Sensibilities. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum, 2022. German: Verletzte Gefühle. Klagenfurt: Wieser, 2021.

Kolloquium, 25.06.2024

Die Bergutopie

Der Roman, an dem ich dieses Jahr im Wiko gearbeitet habe, spielt wieder in meiner Heimatrepublik Dagestan, einem Gebiet im Nordkaukasus, in dem sich Russland, Zentralasien, der Nahe Osten und die Länder des Südkaukasus begegnen.

Dagestan ist ein interessantes Beispiel für die Mischung verschiedener Welten und Kulturen: Berge und Steppen, Christentum, Heidentum und Islam, Krieger und Kaufleute, demokratische und autokratische Politik. Es gehörte zu den jüngsten Eroberungen des Russischen Kaiserreichs und hat sich daher eine einzigartige Identität bewahrt, die es von anderen Gebieten des heutigen Russlands unterscheidet.

In meinem Kolloquium möchte ich eine Reihe von Fragen und Themen der Geschichte Dagestans und seiner Moderne erkunden, die meine fiktionalen Texte und insbesondere meinen aktuellen Roman beeinflussen.