Emshan

Once the writer himself described how he created the story: “It was a wandering plot already touched upon in the Volhynian chronicle. I had known it since my youth from Apollo Maykov’s poem ‘Emshan.’ Some things were told to me by the writer Sergei Markov, and my then still young friend Olzhas Suleimenov told me that he found in Cairo the grave of Sultan Beybars.

The inscription on it said that he was a Kipchak of the Bersh clan. And there was also a Kazakh proverb saying it is better to be the base of a mountain in your homeland than its summit (a sultan) abroad.”

That’s how the tale “Emshan” was born—so that for every reader, along with the bittersweet wormwood on their lips, comes a sadness for their native land.