Poetry
Mosquito
Masa
Akhmet Baitursynov · 1911
Synopsis
A collection of thirty-six poems in Kazakh, from six lines to more than a hundred and fifty, addressed to the author's people, to his own, and to generations to come. The opening poem makes the book a buzzing meant to rouse a sleeping people; published in 1911, the collection was expanded in 1922.
Context
The collection appeared in 1911, two years after the author's exile from the steppe, and was expanded and reissued in 1922. Adebiportal sees in it Baitursynov's first clearly political work; two years later he was to head, in Orenburg, the first major newspaper in Kazakh. His poems, of very uneven length, all address their readers directly. Jake Zawlacki translated them into English for Academic Studies Press, in 2026, under the title Mosquito, in a volume of two hundred pages.
Who it is for
A political poetry of struggle, to be read in order to understand the Kazakh national awakening of the beginning of the century.
Prizes and reception
His work is on the curriculum of Kazakhstan's secondary schools, according to Adebiportal; the collection was translated into English in 2026.
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