This is a beautiful translation by John Farndon (with Olga Nakston) of the late Ravil Bukharaev's literary existential novel memoir in which he explains to his wife how his Muslim faith and ideals influenced both his love for her and his understanding of life and self, particularly his quest for truth and 'authenticity'. Throughout their long marriage, the writers and poets Ravil Bukharaev and Lydia Grigorieva had written in separate rooms in their home. In this deeply-felt and poetic memoir, Ravil writes to Lydia in order to try explain (at last) things left unsaid over the years. With immense honesty and insight, he explores how their journey together has been shaped by his profound Muslim beliefs and his lifelong search for what is authentic and true. Along the way, he creates finely defined and moving vignettes of eight very different people struggling to find meaning in their lives, from old Elizaveta Osipovna, alone in her Moscow flat, to proud Arzhana coping with a tough life in the Altai mountains.

About the Author
Ravil Bukharaev (1951-2012) was a celebrated Tatar writer, poet and scholar of religious, cultural and political history of his native Tatarstan and author of over thirty books. Born in Kazan, the capital, in 1992 he left Russia and moved to London with his artist/poet wife Lydia Grigorieva in 1992 and subsequently joined the BBC World Service. Latterly, following early retirement, he committed himself to supporting a number of UNESCO projects.

Reviews
'Ravil Bukharaev carries the flame of the finest Russian prose - of Pushkin, Turgenev, Bunin. His classical clarity, his perfect balance of phrase and thought and the unhurried and magnanimous flow of his narration are wonderfully rendered from Russian by John Farndon's English translation. Letters to Another Room is an everlasting dialogue between the author and his characters, between the writer and his readers, between the narrator and his translator - a broad and true dialogue that bridges cultures and epochs.'
HAMID ISMAILOV Author of The Railway and A Poet and Bin-Laden

'...This writing [by Ravil Bukharaev] is at the limits of the Russian language as it was with Nabokov and Brodsky; it is constant listening, constant awareness a la Proust of the self, continuous attention towards every infinitesimal facet of Life; relentless chasing of the soul, perpetual astonishment of the fact that one exists, that the world is created for you - you only have to understand it and fall in love with it, and it will reveal itself. And every word runs and hurries, hastens - as if it is a kind of music, or a kind of Arachna's web... It seems to be already a form of writing beyond Speech, some precious Islamic pattern, a dazzling calligraphy, an ornament circumventing the entire world...'

VALENTIN KURBATOV Literary critic and Secretary of the Board of the Russian Union of Writers

Book Information
ISBN 9781898823049
Author Ravil Bukharaev
Format Hardback
Page Count 286
Imprint Renaissance Books
Publisher Global Books
Weight(grams) 500g
Dimensions(mm) 224mm * 146mm * 35mm