Women in Translation Book Club: To Hell With Poets

Please note this meeting will be in person at the bookshop. There will be a mixture of in-person and online meetings throughout the year.

The Women In Translation reading group provides a free, friendly and gentle environment in which opinions are shared and new appreciations can be discovered. A place for curious minds and relaxed conversation hosted by poet and translator Annie Rutherford.

For September 2025 the book will meet in person to discuss Baqytgul Sarmekova's short story collection To Hell With Poets, translated by Mirgul Kali.

Please support the bookshop & the book club by ordering your books through Lighthouse, Use the code LONG-VICTORIOUS-WIT for bookclubbers 10% off.

The Book:

The first English-language collection from an emerging talent of the Kazakh New Wave.

"Baqytgul Sarmekova offers wry, darkly humorous portraits of ordinary Kazakh people held in the snare of patriarchy, cultural tradition, and postsocialist upheaval... Mirgul Kali deftly recreates the atmosphere of these everyday tensions as they quietly seethe just below the surface." - PEN/Heim judges' citation.

Vivid, hilarious and unsettling, the tragicomic characters of To Hell With Poets reflect the inner discord of the modern Kazakh. The stories move between the city and the aul, postsocialist and capitalist worlds, tradition and modernity. Incisive and unapologetic, Sarmekova refuses to hold back, offering a sharp and honest rendering of daily life in Kazakhstan.