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Of Strangers and Bees
‘Life in exile! May it be cursed. Once you have become a stranger, a stranger you shall remain; you may endeavour to make friends, but the task is a difficult one, full end to end with uncertainty.‘
In the latest thrilling multi-stranded epic from the award-winning author of The Devils’ Dance, an Uzbek writer in exile traces the fate of the medieval polymath Avicenna, who shaped Islamic thought and science for centuries.
Waking from a portentous dream, Uzbek writer Sheikhov is convinced that the medieval polymath Avicenna lives on, condemned to roam the world. The novel follows Avicenna in various incarnations 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.
Following the award-winning The Devils' Dance, 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.
In the latest thrilling multi-stranded epic from the award-winning author of The Devils’ Dance, an Uzbek writer in exile traces the fate of the medieval polymath Avicenna, who shaped Islamic thought and science for centuries.
Waking from a portentous dream, Uzbek writer Sheikhov is convinced that the medieval polymath Avicenna lives on, condemned to roam the world. The novel follows Avicenna in various incarnations 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.
Following the award-winning The Devils' Dance, 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.
446 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 31, 2019
The one who walks before you is a deceiver and a windbag, who beautifies what is false and forges fiction. He will supply you with stories you never sought, made murky with falsity, in which the truth is overburdened with lies. But still, he will serve as your secret eye and your watchman.
Avicenna, Hayy ibn Yaqzan
Translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega from Hamid Ismailov's 2001 Uzbek original, Of Strangers and Bees has the subtitle: A Hayy ibn Yaqzan Tale. As the translator explains:
- Sheikov, a Uzbek novelist, hoping to emulate the international success of his friend and compatriot “the hard-working Hamid Ismailov you’ve heard so much about”. Sheikov leads a nomadic existence in the 1990s in exile in various cities (e.g. Paris, New York, Bamberg), in search of the cheapest possible accommodation, paid work/stipends and compatriots, and, in theory although he seems to make limited progress, hunting for traces of Avicenna, as he is convinced that the Bukhara-born polymath didn't die, as history records it, in 1037, but lived on through the centuries.
‘Life in exile! May it be cursed. Once you have become a stranger, a stranger you shall remain; you may endeavour to make friends, but the task is a difficult one, full end to end with uncertainty. You must keep your mind always vigilant and wary, live where others have lived before you; everything mid temporary, everything costs your heart dearly. In exile, you may be closer to the meaning of life.
- a Stranger - essentially the living-on Avicenna, who pops up in various places during history such as late 15th century Florence and the early 18th century Tulip-era Ottoman empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_p...)
- a bee, Siva, who inherited Avicenna's spirit on his death and who, while going about his worker-bee duties, contemplates Sufi mysticism.
It all makes for a heady if not always entirely easy to follow mix, although one Ismailov keeps at a readable and often humorous level - one minute we are learning Ismailov's version of the origin of paintings by da Vinci and Botticelli, and the next with 'the Tashkent terror', the rather infamous Tour de France sprinter, Djamolodine Abdujapparov (as Anglicized here), fresh from his infamous crash on the Champs-Élysées: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x69qvs
A book whose depths I struggled to fully appreciate at times (the reviews below bring out many further aspects), but an impressive achievement, particularly the mixture of Sufism and the loneliness of exile. 3.5 stars rounded to 4 for the ambition.
Now I understood something: all my searching — whether for the right room, or Avicenna, or the lost Stranger among the pages of old manuscripts or in countries developed and developing, whether his name was Vissens or Sheikhov, or whether they were bees, drinking in the secrets of the eternal soul along with their nectar — in truth, it had all been a search for myself, for how I belonged to something more important than the small, idle details of everyday events in this inhospitable world. We find ourselves only when we lose ourselves in the Other.
Some blog reviews:
https://booksandbao.com/2019/10/28/re...
https://www.calvertjournal.com/articl...
https://asianreviewofbooks.com/conten...
https://www.themodernnovel.org/asia/c...
Interviews with author and translator:
https://voicesoncentralasia.org/trans...
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/d...
Avicenna, Hayy ibn Yaqzan
Translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega from Hamid Ismailov's 2001 Uzbek original, Of Strangers and Bees has the subtitle: A Hayy ibn Yaqzan Tale. As the translator explains:
The novel you hold in your hands is not the first to boast the name Hayy ibn Yaqzan. Our present tale spans centuries and half the globe, but it is mostly the quite modern story of a writer in exile in the tumultuous waning days of the twentieth century. The very first Hayy ibn Yaqzan, on the other hand, was the eponymous protagonist of an eleventh-century allegory by the Persian philosopher Avicenna. Or shall we call him the Uzbek philosopher Abu Ali ibn Sino?The resulting novel is fascinating, with three intertwined stories, those of::
- Sheikov, a Uzbek novelist, hoping to emulate the international success of his friend and compatriot “the hard-working Hamid Ismailov you’ve heard so much about”. Sheikov leads a nomadic existence in the 1990s in exile in various cities (e.g. Paris, New York, Bamberg), in search of the cheapest possible accommodation, paid work/stipends and compatriots, and, in theory although he seems to make limited progress, hunting for traces of Avicenna, as he is convinced that the Bukhara-born polymath didn't die, as history records it, in 1037, but lived on through the centuries.
‘Life in exile! May it be cursed. Once you have become a stranger, a stranger you shall remain; you may endeavour to make friends, but the task is a difficult one, full end to end with uncertainty. You must keep your mind always vigilant and wary, live where others have lived before you; everything mid temporary, everything costs your heart dearly. In exile, you may be closer to the meaning of life.
- a Stranger - essentially the living-on Avicenna, who pops up in various places during history such as late 15th century Florence and the early 18th century Tulip-era Ottoman empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_p...)
- a bee, Siva, who inherited Avicenna's spirit on his death and who, while going about his worker-bee duties, contemplates Sufi mysticism.
It all makes for a heady if not always entirely easy to follow mix, although one Ismailov keeps at a readable and often humorous level - one minute we are learning Ismailov's version of the origin of paintings by da Vinci and Botticelli, and the next with 'the Tashkent terror', the rather infamous Tour de France sprinter, Djamolodine Abdujapparov (as Anglicized here), fresh from his infamous crash on the Champs-Élysées: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x69qvs
A book whose depths I struggled to fully appreciate at times (the reviews below bring out many further aspects), but an impressive achievement, particularly the mixture of Sufism and the loneliness of exile. 3.5 stars rounded to 4 for the ambition.
Now I understood something: all my searching — whether for the right room, or Avicenna, or the lost Stranger among the pages of old manuscripts or in countries developed and developing, whether his name was Vissens or Sheikhov, or whether they were bees, drinking in the secrets of the eternal soul along with their nectar — in truth, it had all been a search for myself, for how I belonged to something more important than the small, idle details of everyday events in this inhospitable world. We find ourselves only when we lose ourselves in the Other.
Some blog reviews:
https://booksandbao.com/2019/10/28/re...
https://www.calvertjournal.com/articl...
https://asianreviewofbooks.com/conten...
https://www.themodernnovel.org/asia/c...
Interviews with author and translator:
https://voicesoncentralasia.org/trans...
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/d...
December 24, 2019
This is a novel that interleaves three different narratives which don’t directly link together. This means it can be difficult to follow at times, although the writing style, especially in the longest story, has a very light touch and encourages you to read on.
What we read is a mixture of:
- The story of Sheikhov who is a Uzbek novelist (I have never read an Uzbek novel before) who travels around between various cities scraping out an existence whilst hunting for traces of Avicenna. This was a new name for me, an Uzbek polymath. Sheikhov is convinced that Avicenna did not die in 1037 (which is what the history books say) but lived on for several centuries.
- Various episodes in the life of The Stranger (the not-dead Avicenna) who pops up in various times and locations.
- The story of a bee called Sina.
It was this third strand of the book that took me the longest to come to terms with. Sina may be a bee, but he is a bee with a lot of human consciousness. You’ll have to read the book to find out why/how Sina is so articulate and spends a lot of his time contemplating Sufi wisdom.
This interleaving of episodic story lines makes for a head-spinning mixture. This is a book that it can be tricky to keep track of. But Ismailov writes (and Shelley Fairweather-Vega translates) in a way that makes the whole thing very readable even when it is at its most confusing. Physically, it looks like a big book, but the print is fairly large with good spacing and I found myself getting through the pages a lot faster than I would normally expect to.
It’s a novel I find hard to summarise. But I did find a useful review here: https://www.calvertjournal.com/articl...
These two paragraphs towards the end of that review give a helpful overview of the book:
’For all its depth and complexity, Of Strangers and Bees remains a page-turner, driven by Sheikhov’s captivating inner monologue. He is the immigrant’s everyman, humble and subject to the ways of strangers in strange lands, yet full of a writer’s acerbic and insightful reflection. He demonstrates an element of the exiled author’s psyche that many readers can relate to, however painfully: “I am a stranger at home, and I am nobody abroad.”
In this way, we cannot compartmentalise the book as a rare translation of Uzbek literature into English. Ismailov combines traditional oral Uzbek storytelling with contemporary fiction to create a modern parable about the search for truth. And isn’t that what all literature is about — transcending cultures, languages, and borders to see through another’s eyes and find common truths? Even Sheikhov finds that all searching for Avicenna leads him back to himself, and he realises that he “belonged to something more important than the small, idle details of everyday events in this inhospitable world. We find ourselves only when we lose ourselves in the Other.”’
This is one of those books that requires a second reading, I think. Maybe with a bit of research into things Uzbek and Avicenna related first.
3.5 stars after first reading but I can quite see that increasing on a second reading, so I will round up as that’s the direction I think it should be heading in.
What we read is a mixture of:
- The story of Sheikhov who is a Uzbek novelist (I have never read an Uzbek novel before) who travels around between various cities scraping out an existence whilst hunting for traces of Avicenna. This was a new name for me, an Uzbek polymath. Sheikhov is convinced that Avicenna did not die in 1037 (which is what the history books say) but lived on for several centuries.
- Various episodes in the life of The Stranger (the not-dead Avicenna) who pops up in various times and locations.
- The story of a bee called Sina.
It was this third strand of the book that took me the longest to come to terms with. Sina may be a bee, but he is a bee with a lot of human consciousness. You’ll have to read the book to find out why/how Sina is so articulate and spends a lot of his time contemplating Sufi wisdom.
This interleaving of episodic story lines makes for a head-spinning mixture. This is a book that it can be tricky to keep track of. But Ismailov writes (and Shelley Fairweather-Vega translates) in a way that makes the whole thing very readable even when it is at its most confusing. Physically, it looks like a big book, but the print is fairly large with good spacing and I found myself getting through the pages a lot faster than I would normally expect to.
It’s a novel I find hard to summarise. But I did find a useful review here: https://www.calvertjournal.com/articl...
These two paragraphs towards the end of that review give a helpful overview of the book:
’For all its depth and complexity, Of Strangers and Bees remains a page-turner, driven by Sheikhov’s captivating inner monologue. He is the immigrant’s everyman, humble and subject to the ways of strangers in strange lands, yet full of a writer’s acerbic and insightful reflection. He demonstrates an element of the exiled author’s psyche that many readers can relate to, however painfully: “I am a stranger at home, and I am nobody abroad.”
In this way, we cannot compartmentalise the book as a rare translation of Uzbek literature into English. Ismailov combines traditional oral Uzbek storytelling with contemporary fiction to create a modern parable about the search for truth. And isn’t that what all literature is about — transcending cultures, languages, and borders to see through another’s eyes and find common truths? Even Sheikhov finds that all searching for Avicenna leads him back to himself, and he realises that he “belonged to something more important than the small, idle details of everyday events in this inhospitable world. We find ourselves only when we lose ourselves in the Other.”’
This is one of those books that requires a second reading, I think. Maybe with a bit of research into things Uzbek and Avicenna related first.
3.5 stars after first reading but I can quite see that increasing on a second reading, so I will round up as that’s the direction I think it should be heading in.
January 23, 2022
Of Strangers and Bees / by Hamid Ismailov
Drawing parallels with his own biography, Ismailov depicts the life of Sheikhov, an Uzbek writer in exile who is forced to odd-job around Europe and the US, scraping by on good will and cultural prejudices alike to survive. But seeping through this surface reality are dream sequences that betray a secret, inner quest for philosophical truth and Sufi wisdom. They are ethereal prismatic tales where the writer seeks to find trace of the immortal soul of Sufi mystic Avicenna, or in Uzbek Abu Ali ibn Sino. From folk tales of Shogun Japan, and legends of the philosopher's stone and alchemy, to revolutionary coups in Ottoman Istanbul, the spectre of the Stranger dances like the shadows on the inside of Plato's cave. And all the while in parallel flights of fancy, his soul and wisdom are transfigured into the life of Sina the bee.
There is some of the best fable and legend writing in Of Strangers and Bees. Occassional passages needed rereading in order to figure out the delirium and fugue of characters spiralling around like dervishes. But you need to let go and swirl with the broader sweep of the text, trusting what Ismailov has set in motion, to let you better appreciate the beauty of the narrative arc, and the spinning of the prism.
Drawing parallels with his own biography, Ismailov depicts the life of Sheikhov, an Uzbek writer in exile who is forced to odd-job around Europe and the US, scraping by on good will and cultural prejudices alike to survive. But seeping through this surface reality are dream sequences that betray a secret, inner quest for philosophical truth and Sufi wisdom. They are ethereal prismatic tales where the writer seeks to find trace of the immortal soul of Sufi mystic Avicenna, or in Uzbek Abu Ali ibn Sino. From folk tales of Shogun Japan, and legends of the philosopher's stone and alchemy, to revolutionary coups in Ottoman Istanbul, the spectre of the Stranger dances like the shadows on the inside of Plato's cave. And all the while in parallel flights of fancy, his soul and wisdom are transfigured into the life of Sina the bee.
There is some of the best fable and legend writing in Of Strangers and Bees. Occassional passages needed rereading in order to figure out the delirium and fugue of characters spiralling around like dervishes. But you need to let go and swirl with the broader sweep of the text, trusting what Ismailov has set in motion, to let you better appreciate the beauty of the narrative arc, and the spinning of the prism.
April 17, 2021
This review is taken from my IG account @descanto
I am falling in love with Hamid Ismailov's recently. I know that to understand Ismailov's is like to go through male's head - difficult and an impossible task to do - who can understand men's way of thinking anyway. This novel is without exception.
In this novel Of Stranger and bees, you will read several stories in one whole scenario. You will encounter Sheikhov, an Uzbek novelist who wander around various cities and hunts for traces of Avicenna. He is convinced that Avicenna did not die in 1037 but he's still very much alive for several centuries. There are also various scemes in the life of presumable not-dead Avicenna whom Ismailov refers as The Stranger in this novel and a story of a bee called Sina. These characters pop up in various time and places.
What is always interesting in Ismailov's works is the mixture between reality and fiction is so thin. There is also rich portrayal in the local culture and wisdom along with the beliefs. In this novel? The Sufi wisdom for instance. The bees taken as the title of the novel is prolly inspired by one of the verses in the Holy Koran: An Nahl; named after honey bees mentioned in verse 68, and contains a comparison of the industry and adaptability of honey bees to the industry of man. Ismailov linked it briliantly to Avicenna/Ibn Sina, a Persian polymath who's regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers and writers of the Islamic golden age and the father of early modern medicine.
There are many characters, some plots which form stories with different setting of place and time. They don't really link together and one may get lost reading this novel. Yet it is not a-mission-impossible- thing tho because the writing style (it's freaking long) has very light tone and it invites you to go on reading. The translator's note is also insightful esp. about the Sufism and Persian lit.
Give it a read!
Thank you, Mas T.A for shipping the book all the way from KL and @kinokuniyamalaysia for the book suply.
BOOK 13: OF STRANGERS AND BEES by HAMID ISMAILOV for my #ReadTiltedAxis Month
Translated by: Shelley Fairweather-Vega
📍 Uzbekistan
Published by @tiltedaxisbooks/ @tiltedaxispress
I am falling in love with Hamid Ismailov's recently. I know that to understand Ismailov's is like to go through male's head - difficult and an impossible task to do - who can understand men's way of thinking anyway. This novel is without exception.
In this novel Of Stranger and bees, you will read several stories in one whole scenario. You will encounter Sheikhov, an Uzbek novelist who wander around various cities and hunts for traces of Avicenna. He is convinced that Avicenna did not die in 1037 but he's still very much alive for several centuries. There are also various scemes in the life of presumable not-dead Avicenna whom Ismailov refers as The Stranger in this novel and a story of a bee called Sina. These characters pop up in various time and places.
What is always interesting in Ismailov's works is the mixture between reality and fiction is so thin. There is also rich portrayal in the local culture and wisdom along with the beliefs. In this novel? The Sufi wisdom for instance. The bees taken as the title of the novel is prolly inspired by one of the verses in the Holy Koran: An Nahl; named after honey bees mentioned in verse 68, and contains a comparison of the industry and adaptability of honey bees to the industry of man. Ismailov linked it briliantly to Avicenna/Ibn Sina, a Persian polymath who's regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers and writers of the Islamic golden age and the father of early modern medicine.
There are many characters, some plots which form stories with different setting of place and time. They don't really link together and one may get lost reading this novel. Yet it is not a-mission-impossible- thing tho because the writing style (it's freaking long) has very light tone and it invites you to go on reading. The translator's note is also insightful esp. about the Sufism and Persian lit.
Give it a read!
Thank you, Mas T.A for shipping the book all the way from KL and @kinokuniyamalaysia for the book suply.
BOOK 13: OF STRANGERS AND BEES by HAMID ISMAILOV for my #ReadTiltedAxis Month
Translated by: Shelley Fairweather-Vega
📍 Uzbekistan
Published by @tiltedaxisbooks/ @tiltedaxispress
August 24, 2025
His writing is insane.
December 15, 2022
Written in Ismailov's inimitable style by weaving several storylines which do not quite intersect but instead run parallel with one another, "Of Stranger and Bees" is probably the author's best work yet -- at least, out of all the ones that have been translated into English. The narrative incorporates the journey of three individuals: the exiled Uzbek writer Sheikov (who is presumably a stand-in for Ismailov himself, though Ismailov himself makes an 'appearance' in the novel several times), the polymath Ibnu Sina (or Avicenna to the Western world), and the relentless bee who toils day after day in its hive.
While The Devils' Dance highlights the fate that awaits Uzbek writers & learned professionals who show 'democratic tendencies', this particular novel only touches on this lightly. Instead of being imprisoned like so many other of his compatriots, in this tale Sheikov manages to escape to Europe and depends on his language skills and strangers' kindness in order to begin his life anew. When he has a dream that insists that Ibnu Sina is still alive and is roaming the Earth in various disguises, Sheikov creates a narrative where he imagines Ibnu Sina's travels and accomplishments whenever he reaches a new destination in his own journey. In between all this, there are small interludes where a bee called Sina makes an appearance in the book, and it's here where we find some faith-related philosophies and soliloquies that fit Sheikov's journey. All these components together are interwoven in such a way that makes the whole of this book, which ultimately leads Sheikov to this revelation:
At the end of the day, the above passage from the novel best describes this work itself, which is a search for ourselves through others.
Note: Thanks to Shelley-Fairweather Vega who assisted to bring this tale to a more global stage by translating this from Russian, with additional thanks to Tilted Axis for publishing this title and other titles by other oftentimes marginalized authors!
While The Devils' Dance highlights the fate that awaits Uzbek writers & learned professionals who show 'democratic tendencies', this particular novel only touches on this lightly. Instead of being imprisoned like so many other of his compatriots, in this tale Sheikov manages to escape to Europe and depends on his language skills and strangers' kindness in order to begin his life anew. When he has a dream that insists that Ibnu Sina is still alive and is roaming the Earth in various disguises, Sheikov creates a narrative where he imagines Ibnu Sina's travels and accomplishments whenever he reaches a new destination in his own journey. In between all this, there are small interludes where a bee called Sina makes an appearance in the book, and it's here where we find some faith-related philosophies and soliloquies that fit Sheikov's journey. All these components together are interwoven in such a way that makes the whole of this book, which ultimately leads Sheikov to this revelation:
Now I understood something: all my searching- whether for the right room, or Avicenna, or the lost Stranger among the pages of old manuscripts or in countries developed or developing, whether his name was Vissens or Sheikhov, or whether they were bees, drinking in the secrets of the eternal soul along with their nectar- in truth, it had been a search for myself, for how I belonged to something more important than the small idle details of everyday events in this inhospitable world. We find ourselves only when we lose ourselves in the Other.
At the end of the day, the above passage from the novel best describes this work itself, which is a search for ourselves through others.
Note: Thanks to Shelley-Fairweather Vega who assisted to bring this tale to a more global stage by translating this from Russian, with additional thanks to Tilted Axis for publishing this title and other titles by other oftentimes marginalized authors!
October 24, 2022
"Now I understand something: all my searching -- in truth, it had all been a search for myself, for how I belong to something more important than the small, idle details of everyday events in this inhospitable world. We find ourselves only when we lose ourselves in the Other."
What do two men -- one an Uzbek author in the 1990s, and the other the great medieval polymath, Ibn Sina ("Avicenna") -- and a bee have in common?
They all hold within poison and honey, with the power to either kill or bring life. It now boils down to individual choice: which essence will we choose to spread around us?
This is my third title from Tilted Axis Press, and they're always, always INTERESTING reads! This was my first Ismailov, and it's a refreshing change from the usual Western literary fiction. For one thing, the dates are not in common era ("in the year of our Lord" etcetera), but rather in the year of the hijra. It's a wonderful thing, to be reminded that a big part of the world measures time differently, with a different historical epicenter than what a Westernized education has.
Three very different main characters make for three different stories told in an interwoven style, but done in such a light manner that it was easy going, and not at all mentally taxing, despite the serious themes dealing with religion, philosophy, and of course, the existential. There are threads that bind us all together, man and bee, Christian and Muslim, with God / Allah and our brothers and sisters in Creation. And while Ismailov writes of the pain of an exiled author (his work is banned in his home country and so he has stayed away for years, bemoaning decades of separation from family and his home library in interviews), this particular book is more hopeful than sad. When one sees one's life as important as that of one busy bee in a hive, dancing as dervishes do to tune themselves with the Divine harmony of the cosmos, it is both a relief and a reminder. For if God cares so for each bird and bee, then there is hope yet for egotistic me.
What do two men -- one an Uzbek author in the 1990s, and the other the great medieval polymath, Ibn Sina ("Avicenna") -- and a bee have in common?
They all hold within poison and honey, with the power to either kill or bring life. It now boils down to individual choice: which essence will we choose to spread around us?
This is my third title from Tilted Axis Press, and they're always, always INTERESTING reads! This was my first Ismailov, and it's a refreshing change from the usual Western literary fiction. For one thing, the dates are not in common era ("in the year of our Lord" etcetera), but rather in the year of the hijra. It's a wonderful thing, to be reminded that a big part of the world measures time differently, with a different historical epicenter than what a Westernized education has.
Three very different main characters make for three different stories told in an interwoven style, but done in such a light manner that it was easy going, and not at all mentally taxing, despite the serious themes dealing with religion, philosophy, and of course, the existential. There are threads that bind us all together, man and bee, Christian and Muslim, with God / Allah and our brothers and sisters in Creation. And while Ismailov writes of the pain of an exiled author (his work is banned in his home country and so he has stayed away for years, bemoaning decades of separation from family and his home library in interviews), this particular book is more hopeful than sad. When one sees one's life as important as that of one busy bee in a hive, dancing as dervishes do to tune themselves with the Divine harmony of the cosmos, it is both a relief and a reminder. For if God cares so for each bird and bee, then there is hope yet for egotistic me.
April 19, 2020
This book is both enjoyable and frustrating: endless stories within stories, sometimes delightful with gorgeous and tragic images, at others just meandering and repetitive but nonetheless compelling. It is not an easy read but a book you feel glad to have read. Four stars.
June 4, 2022
This is an intensely difficult book to rate! My 3* rating is perhaps only a reflection of my incompetence for understanding its true beauty- but I recognise it has true beauty.
I haven't read many books like this; it doesn't have layers, instead it has parallel tracts, which are related but not obviously revealing their interconnectedness until you reach some way down the road, and even then, the connection is subjected to your interpretation.
The Uzbec writer, the protagonist, is a restless soul. He has a dream (around 1988) that the 'Sheikh Ar Rais, Philosopher, Avicenna is still 'alive'.
He says 'It simply came to me in a dream one time that, reading between the lines, the news seemed to be reporting that the Sheikh ar Rais, Avicenna was alive, and being held in a hangar in some Westwen country. The information felt so reliable that, as I slept on, I thought of how many centuries had flown by, and wondered how they had kept up the lie for so long'.
This restlessness takes him on a trajectory following the great personality's footsteps....while his own journey is of a very modern variety (he has very little money and is often at the mercy of human kindness to eat or find a place to stay) he still meets some characters along the way (some he knows, ithers new to him). His Uzbek culture also follows him everywhere he goes, whether it be Paris, the US or Germany, which has its own consequences. The common theme, however, is that he's determined to locate the great Avicenna through these interactions and stories and people, and ensure his, often plagued-with-problems journey, doesn't come to an end.
One of the parallel plots is the story of Sino the Bee (the is a point mentioned in the prologue that Aristotle and Avicenna both wrote 'extensively on bees', there is also the reference to the Quran Chapter An Nahl which is entirely based on Bees but that has a message for humanity and human beings in the context of the Bees).
Sino goes through its life cycle and major life milestones in a beautiful and poetical manner- I thoroughly enjoyed reading these accounts!
Another parallel tract was that of The Stranger which was Avicenna himself. These accounts were bizarre and wonderful but in the modern context their meaning could be lost. I struggled here. If you are used to the Avicenna that has been transformed to be compatible with the 'Western diet' then you may be a little bewildered here. The reality of life of these great Philiosophers' sufi lives as they lived through them can be very bizarre and totally difficult to extract the meaning that we seek to extract through a Western lens. I must admit it took me a while not to look for messages in everything.
Finally every chapter begins with an extract of Avicenna's HAYY IBN YAQZAN, which loosely translates to 'Alive/Live son of (the) Awake', and these carry the novel along nicely offering relevance to the trajectory of the travelling writer, Avicenna and Sino's stories.
A culmination of all the 'tracts' is found in the writer's following words:
'Now I understood something: all my searching- whether for the right room, or Avicenna, or the lost Stranger among the pages of old manuscripts or in countries developed or developing, whether his name was Vissens or Sheikhov, or whether they were bees, drinking in the secrets of the eternal soul along with their nectar- in truth, it had been a search for myself, for how I belonged to something more important than the small idle details of everyday events in this inhospitable world. We find ourselves only when we lose ourselves in the Other'.
Perhaps it really was just about a search for oneself!
Of Strangers and Bees is a mammoth book at 451 pages which would be impossible to read in one sitting but I would advise reading it in as few sittings as possible to get the most out of the storytelling, I easily lost my place in the long intervals between reads. Next, I wouldn't stop here with this book- perhaps if I were to go away and read about Avicenna on the back of this book, it would speak to me differently? It would be a shame to waste that opportunity.
I wish I had come to this book with better knowledge of Middle Eastern Philosophy, or perhaps I should wish I could read the original version of HAYY IBN YAQZAN? Either way this book left me missing something (through no fault of the translator!) maybe something between the lines is missing to help the Western layman appreciate the true beauty of this novel and everything within it or else only those readers can be deemed worthy of it that can better appreciate the references to Persian culture and literature- writing, music and poetry....and of course those that fall in between the two categories of readers...students of these worlds!!!
I haven't read many books like this; it doesn't have layers, instead it has parallel tracts, which are related but not obviously revealing their interconnectedness until you reach some way down the road, and even then, the connection is subjected to your interpretation.
The Uzbec writer, the protagonist, is a restless soul. He has a dream (around 1988) that the 'Sheikh Ar Rais, Philosopher, Avicenna is still 'alive'.
He says 'It simply came to me in a dream one time that, reading between the lines, the news seemed to be reporting that the Sheikh ar Rais, Avicenna was alive, and being held in a hangar in some Westwen country. The information felt so reliable that, as I slept on, I thought of how many centuries had flown by, and wondered how they had kept up the lie for so long'.
This restlessness takes him on a trajectory following the great personality's footsteps....while his own journey is of a very modern variety (he has very little money and is often at the mercy of human kindness to eat or find a place to stay) he still meets some characters along the way (some he knows, ithers new to him). His Uzbek culture also follows him everywhere he goes, whether it be Paris, the US or Germany, which has its own consequences. The common theme, however, is that he's determined to locate the great Avicenna through these interactions and stories and people, and ensure his, often plagued-with-problems journey, doesn't come to an end.
One of the parallel plots is the story of Sino the Bee (the is a point mentioned in the prologue that Aristotle and Avicenna both wrote 'extensively on bees', there is also the reference to the Quran Chapter An Nahl which is entirely based on Bees but that has a message for humanity and human beings in the context of the Bees).
Sino goes through its life cycle and major life milestones in a beautiful and poetical manner- I thoroughly enjoyed reading these accounts!
Another parallel tract was that of The Stranger which was Avicenna himself. These accounts were bizarre and wonderful but in the modern context their meaning could be lost. I struggled here. If you are used to the Avicenna that has been transformed to be compatible with the 'Western diet' then you may be a little bewildered here. The reality of life of these great Philiosophers' sufi lives as they lived through them can be very bizarre and totally difficult to extract the meaning that we seek to extract through a Western lens. I must admit it took me a while not to look for messages in everything.
Finally every chapter begins with an extract of Avicenna's HAYY IBN YAQZAN, which loosely translates to 'Alive/Live son of (the) Awake', and these carry the novel along nicely offering relevance to the trajectory of the travelling writer, Avicenna and Sino's stories.
A culmination of all the 'tracts' is found in the writer's following words:
'Now I understood something: all my searching- whether for the right room, or Avicenna, or the lost Stranger among the pages of old manuscripts or in countries developed or developing, whether his name was Vissens or Sheikhov, or whether they were bees, drinking in the secrets of the eternal soul along with their nectar- in truth, it had been a search for myself, for how I belonged to something more important than the small idle details of everyday events in this inhospitable world. We find ourselves only when we lose ourselves in the Other'.
Perhaps it really was just about a search for oneself!
Of Strangers and Bees is a mammoth book at 451 pages which would be impossible to read in one sitting but I would advise reading it in as few sittings as possible to get the most out of the storytelling, I easily lost my place in the long intervals between reads. Next, I wouldn't stop here with this book- perhaps if I were to go away and read about Avicenna on the back of this book, it would speak to me differently? It would be a shame to waste that opportunity.
I wish I had come to this book with better knowledge of Middle Eastern Philosophy, or perhaps I should wish I could read the original version of HAYY IBN YAQZAN? Either way this book left me missing something (through no fault of the translator!) maybe something between the lines is missing to help the Western layman appreciate the true beauty of this novel and everything within it or else only those readers can be deemed worthy of it that can better appreciate the references to Persian culture and literature- writing, music and poetry....and of course those that fall in between the two categories of readers...students of these worlds!!!
January 12, 2026
I didn’t like this book. To be more specific, I didn’t like the protagonist: this Soviet-Uzbek author in exile, Sheikhov, who may or may not be Ismailov’s own self-insert. I didn’t like Sheikhov because I know men like Sheikhov. I’ve grown up around men like Sheikhov.
Sheikhov represents a certain archetype of a Central Asian man born and raised in the Soviet system, and one whose existence is a constant battle of these two opposing political and philosophical worlds. This is a man who has absorbed the worst of both of these worlds but has no self-awareness to see that in himself. He is highly educated and well-read, but he uses his academic achievements as a pedestal from which he can judge those around him. He’s deeply religious, and respectful of his own culture, but he wears his spiritual humility as a shiny medal on his chest. He loves and reveres the women in his life, but he makes crude jokes about female genitalia as is willfully ignorant of his own casual male chauvinism.
He looks down on those “uncivilized Westerners” and their bourgeois decadence, but he will gladly taste that decadence if his Communist benefactors foot the bill. He rages against the system that has colonized and oppressed his people, but he fails to acknowledge that he is very much a part and a beneficiary of that system. He longs for a past that has never existed (quite literally in Sheikhov’s case) because working towards a better, more progressive future means accepting the present, and doing something more than just shaking your fists at the powers that be.
Now, is this satire? Did Ismailov intentionally write his fictional counterpart as a navel-gazing chauvinist stuck in the past? This book is nothing if not funny and witty, and you can’t help but take the whole thing with a hefty dosage of sodium chloride. From the immortal Avicenna who’s been cursed to roam the world as the Stranger, to the young worker bee, Sina, to the exiled author and his long-suffering wife trying to create a new life in Europe, Of Strangers and Bees is a fable. A plot hole-ridden story told by that guy at the party who claims to have shaken hands with Generalissimo Stalin while also tracing his lineage directly to Tamerlan himself. Ismailov even puts himself in the story, as Sheikhov’s friend and an overall brilliant man. Satire? Perhaps.
Worker bees are always female, but Sina – our worker bee protagonist – is male. My first and uncritical reaction to such a grave scientific inaccuracy on the author’s part is that it’s a fable, and that for the story to work, the bee protagonist has to be male. But why? What is it about a story about war, politics, love, and faith that can only be told from a perspective of a male bee? To me it speaks of the author’s inability (or unwillingness) to see beyond his own perspective, and to look for wisdom and meaning in a female-centered story. Yes, I know, they’re bees, but this is a fable in which bees serve as a proxy for humans, and how much different this fable would have been if Sina was a female worker bee, whose sole purpose in life was to collect nectar, and take care of the Queen and her offspring.
I’m getting a feeling that there is a great deal about this book’s subtext or message that has gone over my head. Conversely, there are narratives and intricacies here that perhaps can only be seen and judged if you are a part of that peculiar branch of the Homo Sapiens species called Homo Sovieticus. I belong to a cadre of authors and academics who are trying to make sense of the Frankenstein Monster that was the Soviet society. For that purpose alone, Of Strangers and Bees is there to help us understand relationships and hierarchies that existed between different ethnicities and classes behind the Iron Curtain, and that still persist today.
The translation by Shelley Fairweather-Vega is what made reading this book an enjoyable experience.
More reviews and essays on my Substack
Sheikhov represents a certain archetype of a Central Asian man born and raised in the Soviet system, and one whose existence is a constant battle of these two opposing political and philosophical worlds. This is a man who has absorbed the worst of both of these worlds but has no self-awareness to see that in himself. He is highly educated and well-read, but he uses his academic achievements as a pedestal from which he can judge those around him. He’s deeply religious, and respectful of his own culture, but he wears his spiritual humility as a shiny medal on his chest. He loves and reveres the women in his life, but he makes crude jokes about female genitalia as is willfully ignorant of his own casual male chauvinism.
He looks down on those “uncivilized Westerners” and their bourgeois decadence, but he will gladly taste that decadence if his Communist benefactors foot the bill. He rages against the system that has colonized and oppressed his people, but he fails to acknowledge that he is very much a part and a beneficiary of that system. He longs for a past that has never existed (quite literally in Sheikhov’s case) because working towards a better, more progressive future means accepting the present, and doing something more than just shaking your fists at the powers that be.
Now, is this satire? Did Ismailov intentionally write his fictional counterpart as a navel-gazing chauvinist stuck in the past? This book is nothing if not funny and witty, and you can’t help but take the whole thing with a hefty dosage of sodium chloride. From the immortal Avicenna who’s been cursed to roam the world as the Stranger, to the young worker bee, Sina, to the exiled author and his long-suffering wife trying to create a new life in Europe, Of Strangers and Bees is a fable. A plot hole-ridden story told by that guy at the party who claims to have shaken hands with Generalissimo Stalin while also tracing his lineage directly to Tamerlan himself. Ismailov even puts himself in the story, as Sheikhov’s friend and an overall brilliant man. Satire? Perhaps.
Worker bees are always female, but Sina – our worker bee protagonist – is male. My first and uncritical reaction to such a grave scientific inaccuracy on the author’s part is that it’s a fable, and that for the story to work, the bee protagonist has to be male. But why? What is it about a story about war, politics, love, and faith that can only be told from a perspective of a male bee? To me it speaks of the author’s inability (or unwillingness) to see beyond his own perspective, and to look for wisdom and meaning in a female-centered story. Yes, I know, they’re bees, but this is a fable in which bees serve as a proxy for humans, and how much different this fable would have been if Sina was a female worker bee, whose sole purpose in life was to collect nectar, and take care of the Queen and her offspring.
I’m getting a feeling that there is a great deal about this book’s subtext or message that has gone over my head. Conversely, there are narratives and intricacies here that perhaps can only be seen and judged if you are a part of that peculiar branch of the Homo Sapiens species called Homo Sovieticus. I belong to a cadre of authors and academics who are trying to make sense of the Frankenstein Monster that was the Soviet society. For that purpose alone, Of Strangers and Bees is there to help us understand relationships and hierarchies that existed between different ethnicities and classes behind the Iron Curtain, and that still persist today.
The translation by Shelley Fairweather-Vega is what made reading this book an enjoyable experience.
More reviews and essays on my Substack
August 12, 2022
I have a habit of picking books up about topics I know absolutely nothing about and usually enjoying them and this was no exception … everything about this was very clever… Couldn’t put it down
November 12, 2023
A little bit boring but if incarnations is real, then I will beg to God to never send me again into this world.
January 6, 2025
I enjoyed each of the three narratives (less so the one about the bee) but couldn’t figure out how they related to each other or why the chapters skipped around chronologically.
December 19, 2022
An unusual mix of fable, travel and natural history... but so much more. Hard to describe. It centres around exile. The main story follows Sheikov, an Uzbek writer who leaves his country after he dreams that Avicenna, the great Persian-Uzbek thinker, physician, astronomer and writer of the first century, was alive and being held somewhere in the West. But then Sheikov finds he can't return and wanders from country to country. Then there are the travels of Avicenna through the ages and in different countries. Finally there is the story of Sina, a bee, as he grows, fights another hive and is exiled.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
May 22, 2021
Couldn't get into it. Getting into any book is hard after reading an Orringer novel, I find. (She's that good)
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