Читать книгу Beyond the Great Mist - Asia Khafiz - Страница 2

I was born and raised in Central Asia, at the crossroads of the Turkic, Persian and Arabic cultures. The gardens and vineyards bathed in the southern sun, the towering mountains with sharp peaks abutting the vast Central Asian sky, the bustling eastern bazaars with an endless assortment of condiments, oriental flat bread, fruit and vegetables – and filled with all of the sellers and unique aromas of spices – always inspired and fascinated me. And the tales of The Thousand and One Nights, the travels of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta along the Silk Road, and the poetry of Omar Khayyam, Hafez and Rudaki, strongly influenced the formation of my world view. Indeed, my heart and soul are deeply rooted in the East, with its charm, slow pace and its overflowing energy – a spicy hot melting pot in which hundreds of nations and cultures have come together. At the moment, I work as a winemaker in Central Europe. Additionally, I travel frequently and enjoy studying the cultures and gastronomic specialities of different countries. I am particularly interested in folk epics, tales, myths and legends.

During long summer evenings under the Central Asian skies streaked with Milky Way constellations, and with a piala of green tea, my little sister in her insatiable curiosity demanded new tales to help her sleep better. And when all the famous stories had already been told, I felt like Scheherazade on the 300th night! It became clear that the time had come to ignite my imagination and create, create, create. Thus, the novel “The Great Mist” was born. It came together like a khan-atlas patchwork. Like a solid stained glass with a colored mosaic of legends from the East and West. In time, on paper, the novel began to live its own mysterious life. This fantasy tells the story of love and hate, of passion and longing, of dreams and reality – all on the edges of consciousness and subconsciousness. The prophetic components of the story have come true with an unobtrusive effect on the readers, changing the course of their lives in a mystical and unknown way.