Description
A multilayered exploration of poetry, authorship, and digital intelligence by "a writer of immense poetic power" (The Guardian)
Finalist, 2025 National Book Award, Translated Literature
"Many paths cross in Ismailov's beautiful new work-poetry, history and the infinite imagination. Every path winding into another. Every path worth taking."-Patti Smith
In the late 1980s, French poet and psychologist Jon-Perse finds himself in possession of 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 analyzing and generating literature. But beyond the text on his screen there are entire worlds-of history, philosophy, and maybe even of love-in the stories and people he and AI conjure.
Hamid Ismailov brings together his work as a poet, translator, and student of literature of both East and West to craft a postmodern ode to poetry across centuries and continents. Crossing the poetes 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, Ismailov invents an ingenious transnational poetics of love and longing for the digital age. Situated at the crossroads of a multilingual world and mediated by the unreliable sensibilities of digital intelligence, this book is a dazzling celebration of how poetry resonates across time and space.
About the Author
Hamid Ismailov, born in Kyrgyzstan and raised in Uzbekistan, is considered Central Asia's foremost living author. His novels include The Railway, The Dead Lake, and The Underground. He lives in Herts, UK. Shelley Fairweather-Vega is a translator who specializes in prose and poetry from Central Asia. She lives in Seattle, WA.
Reviews
"A genre-blending, time-bending, poetic novel. . . . We Computers is [Ismailov's] most expansive and imaginative creation yet."-Matthew Janney, Financial Times
"Hamid Ismailov's wildly experimental novel . . . creates an alternate history in which a 1980s computer intelligently generates a new kind of mind-expanding, transnational literature."-Boris Kachka, The Atlantic
"Centuries of poetic tradition and the possibilities of artificial intelligence animate this dizzying and gorgeous novel. . . . A rich and sensual tableau that makes an implicit argument for the value of human thought. Readers will go all in for this ambitious, genre-defying work."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Timely, interesting, poetic-and quite good fun, too."-M. A. Orthofer, Complete Review
"A wonderfully chaotic novel."-Modern Novel
Finalist for the National Book Awards Translated Literature Prize, 2025, sponsored by The National Book Foundation
"Many paths cross in Ismailov's beautiful new work-poetry, history and the infinite imagination. Every path winding into another. Every path worth taking."-Patti Smith
"Ismailov's best novel yet, We Computers braids together exquisite classical and modern poetry, disorienting autofiction, and Oulipian metaliterary trickery, without ever losing its sense of fun. Fairweather-Vega's translation handles the multilingual quotations and protean range of pastiche with remarkable deftness."-Samuel Hodgkin, Yale University
Book Information
ISBN 9780300272741
Author Hamid Ismailov
Format Paperback
Page Count 296
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
Series The Margellos World Republic of Letters
