Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, literature has become a key platform in the Caucasus and Central Asia for exploring what it means to be post-Soviet, and the extent to which post-Soviet identity is a postcolonial one. This monograph is the first major study to examine post-Soviet literature from the Caucasus and Central Asia and to employ postcolonial theory as its methodology. Writers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are placed in dialogue with each other to establish how they respond to the post-Soviet transition and negotiate their postcolonial identities in their fiction. Building and expanding on the theoretical tools of postcolonial and decolonial studies, the enquiry covers topics including trauma and memory, gender and the nation, language, censorship, immigration, NGOs, and posthuman utopias.

Overview:

• Examines literary texts from the Caucasus and Central Asia which have never been analysed, and puts them in dialogue with each other for the first time.
• Employs postcolonial and decolonial methodology, presenting a new, decolonial interpretation of the political and cultural developments in the post-Soviet space.
• Shines a spotlight on women authors, filling a gap in the readers' understanding of women's contributions to both post-Soviet and postcolonial literature.