Once In Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan became independent as the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. Author Keith Rosten was a Fulbright Lecturer in Kazakhstan soon after the country gained independence. In Once in Kazakhstan, Rosten draws a sometimes humorous portrait of a critical period in the emergence of Kazakhstan. He interweaves the challenges and exhilaration of living in Kazakhstan with the historical backdrop of a country grappling with its independence. From horse heads in the Central Market, to guns on the ski slopes, to the first-ever parliamentary elections, Rosten takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the country. He leads the reader on a tour of the war monuments in Almaty and the mines of Karaganda. He vividly recounts the change in currency from the Soviet ruble to the tenge. He travels with a candidate for parliament to a rural village near Semipalatinsk and journeys to the Karakhan Mausoleum in Dzhambul. Once in Kazakhstan is an invaluable resource for anyone who is traveling to Kazakhstan.