Short interview with Kazakh writer and poet Olzhas Suleymenov

On April 11, a grandiose event took place at the Eurasian National University named after Leo Gumilev, the presentation of Tursin Jurtbay's book “My pain, my pride - Alash!”. For our people this book is very important and necessary. The event was attended by famous scientists, writers and poets. The poet, writer and literary critic Olzhas Suleimenov was the most important guest of this event.

At the end of the event we asked Olzhas Omaruli to give a short interview for our Literary Portal.

• Olzhas Omaruli, couple words about a book “My pain, my pride - Alash!”

Now this is a very necessary, rare book. On this subject we have long time no one wrote. Tursin Jurtbay invested almost 30 years writing this book. He again revived the figures of those famous heroes, members of the first national party “Alashorda”, which arose in the twentieth century, which included the most educated people of our people.

• Have you somehow contributed to the process of writing this book?

Tursin certainly consulted with me, I think, these conversations affected, helped him in the work.

• The book was translated into Russian, this is a great legacy for Russian-language Kazakh literature, but many believe that there is no such literature, but what do you think?

All world literature is multilingual. In this literature (Kazakh literature) there are real writers, there are so, passing, random. Here it is necessary to pay attention to this, and in what language he expressed the real truth, it is not so important. If he could tell much more about Kazakhs in Russian language than some Kazakhs in Kazakh language told about their people, then I will read, and consider a true writer as the one who told this truth. And Tursin Jurtbay, he is real writer, writing in Kazakh (language). Now the existing work is in Russian (language), with the same force and truth, with which it sounded in Kazakh (language). So I welcome such writers.

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