The stories of Didar Amantay first appeared in the early 1990s, at a time when Kazakhstan was undergoing economic shock therapy. Rupturing the conventions of socialist realism, the stories were well received by the generation that had come of age during the Perestroika of the 1980s. Ever since, Amantay has been writing about subjects that are familiar to Kazakh readers, albeit in a more uncompromising fashion than his artistic peers. This book offers for the first time in English a selection of the writing of this important Kazakh author.
