Soviet Kurgyzstan-born poet, translator and student of literature of both East and West, Ismailov’s exploration of poetry, and digital artificial intelligence with infinite imagination crafting a post-modern ode to poetry across centuries and continents.  Crossing the poétes maudits with beloved Sufi classics, blending absurdist dreams with the life of the famed Persian poet Hafez, moving from careful mathematical calculations to lyrical narratives. He demonstrates a dazzling celebration of how poetry resonates across time and space, in We Computers, In the late 1980s, society has been obsessing over computers impersonating humans, Ismailov has been impersonating a computer.  Originally written in Uzbek and published serially on Telegram, We Computers narrated by expansive, imaginative AI narrator, is genre-bending novel about poetry, authorship, love, knowledge, censorship, truth, and divinity. Raised in Uzbekistan and a UK-based writer in-exile since 1992, Ismailov splices together ideas and stories from distant eras, unearthing hidden connections.

Enchanted by snippets of Persian poetry (ghazals- an ancient poetic love song that remains a popular story-telling device in central and south Asia), he learns from his Uzbek translation partner, Abdulhamid Ismail, Jon-Perse, a French psychologist turned poet turned computer geek builds a computer program capable of both analysing and generating literature.

“There are invisible forms of oppression and domination and we call them the new normal” writes Ismailov.

We Computers: A Ghazal Novel by Hamid Ismailov, translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Yale University Press £15.99/$20, 296 pages.