Overview

Atantai Akbarov's ""God and Love"" is a generous, big-hearted anthology of poems that moves between romantic love lyrics and wide moral vistas. The book gathers entire constellations of forms and moods: poems of homeland and belonging, love sequences, meditations on nature, civic and spiritual addresses, ballads and parables, and concise one, two, three and four-line aphorisms that read like pocket scripture. Akbarov's imagery is vivid and memorable. Night roads hum with wind in the junipers while cranes lift the darkness on their wings. City winter shows us a bus inching through half-awake streets and the chill in an abandoned woman's eyes. Spring arrives as ""the king,"" washes the world clean with a rain that ""calls humanity to purity."" Venice shimmers with beauty and clear intimations of God. These scenes carry the pulse of Central Asia as well as the modern world, inviting readers anywhere to feel at home. Rooted in Kyrgyz culture, Akbarov speaks in conversation with elders and epics. He invokes Umay and Tengri with a direct, contemporary voice, he argues with power and comforts the powerless, and he insists that judgement and renewal begin in the human heart. In the long poems and ""Letters to God,"" faith is not a pose but an active verb, a plea, a reckoning, a promise. The love poems glow with immediacy and wonder, then deepen into philosophy. ""Love is the soul of life,"" he writes, and the book proves it in lyric afster lyric, from first astonishment to tested devotion. The aphorisms sparkle with memorable clarity: ""Justice is the father of laws,"" ""Each person is their own microcosm."" Readers will find a companionable voice that is both musical and plainspoken, tender and uncompromising. These poems honour mothers, bless strangers, rebuke tyrants, and teach by parable: Faith survives the gallows; a wanderer refuses despair; prophets and poets share a single calling. The result is a book of consolation and challenge, meant to be underlined, carried, and returned to often.

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9781918395068

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Atantai Akbarov, Honoured Worker of Culture of the Kyrgyz Republic and Deputy Chairman of the National Union of Writers of the Kyrgyz Republic, was born in 1960 in the Jalal-Abad Region of the Kyrgyz Republic. From 1979 to 1983, he studied at the Faculty of Philology of the Osh State Pedagogical Institute. Between 1983 and 1999, he worked for republican newspapers and magazines. In 2000-2001, he served as an editor at the National Commission on the State Language under the President of the Kyrgyz Republic. From 2001 to 2025, he worked as a consultant, senior consultant, and expert at the Supreme Council of the Kyrgyz Republic. He is also a laureate of the Excellence in Public Service Award.Atantai Akbarov is widely regarded as an innovative poet whose first collection, Argymak, opened new horizons in Kyrgyz poetry. His collection God's Poem laid the foundation for the neo-post-realist movement in Kyrgyz poetry. His later collections - Letters to God, Living Homeland, and I Can't Stop Criticizing My Heart - published in Russian, also marked new frontiers in poetry.Among his awards and honours are the Alykul Osmonov Literary Prize, the Moldo Niyaz Republican Literary Prize, the Kadyr Myrzali Prize (Kazakhstan), the TURKSOY Gold Medal, the Baki (Mahmad Abdulbeki) Prize of the Writers' Union of Turkey, the World Intellectual Property Organization Gold Medal, the A. Chekhov Prize of the Russian Federation, the Certificate of Honour of the Kyrgyz Republic, and the title Honoured Worker of Culture of the Kyrgyz Republic. His book Mothers - Angels on Earth was published in Turkish in Ankara and attracted wide attention across the Turkic world.He is a member of the Eurasian Writers' Union and the Writers' Union of Turkey. Atantai Akbarov is Chairman of the World Academy of Literature and Art Society and Deputy Chairman of the National Union of Writers of the Kyrgyz Republic.In 2025, he was awarded the title Poet of the Year by the International PEN Club of Poets.

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