We invite you to an evening discussion with Hamid Ismailov and Anna Aslanyan about We Computers: A Ghazal Novel. In his new book Ismailov brings together his expertise as a poet, translator, and student of Eastern and Western literature, crafting a multilayered ode to poetry across centuries and continents. We Computers, translated from Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega and published by Yale University Press in August, has been nominated for the National Book Award 2025.

In the late 1980s, French poet and psychologist Jon‑Perse acquires one of the most promising inventions of the century: a computer. Enchanted by snippets of Persian poetry he learns from his Uzbek translation partner, Abdulhamid Ismail, Jon-Perse builds a computer program capable of both analysing and generating literature. But beyond the stories and people he and AI conjure on his screen lie entire worlds – of history, philosophy, and maybe even of love.

We Computers is situated at the crossroads of cultures and languages – crossing the poètes maudits with Sufi classics, moving from Parisian love affairs to the mystical life of the famed Persian poet Hafez, and melding technical analysis with ambiguous lyrical narratives. Ismailov taps into timely debates about digital intelligence, authorship, and the relationship between storyteller and reader – and the shifting boundaries between all three.

Hamid Ismailov is a journalist, author and poet who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 due to what the state called 'unacceptable democratic tendencies'. He came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service, as BBC Uzbek correspondent and later as the BBC World Service’s first Writer in Residence. He is currently the RFE/RL Regional Director for Central Asia. 

Several of Hamid Ismailov’s Russian-original novels have been published to great acclaim (The Dead Lake was named Independent Book of the Year and Guardian Readers Book of the Year in 2014). The Devils' Dance, his first novel to be translated from Uzbek by Donald Rayfield and John Farndon, won the EBRD Prize. We Computers: A Ghazal Novel was published by Yale University Press in their Margellos World Republic of Letters series in August 2025.

Anna Aslanyan is a journalist and translator. She writes for the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, the Guardian and other publications. Her popular history of translation, Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History, was published by Profile in 2021.

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