4ème anglaise

Turkmenistan, a Central Asian dictatorship, is one of the most closed-off countries in the world – It also one of the worst with North Korea in terms of freedom of the press. As a result, Turkmenistan is frequently misunderstood. The small amount of information that ends up in the Western media is a caricature of Turkmenbashi’s cult of personality and the country’s tremendous gas reserves. For the very first time, this book presents Turkmenistan, a complex country oscillating between tradition and modernity, in all of its aspects : geography, history, politics, economy, population, society and culture, with over 280 color photographs. Among the many aspects of contemporary Turkmen society illuminated, this book sheds light on, for instance : Opposition movements, blocked websites, the zemzem (a desert lizard), the öwlats (sacred tribes), television programs, weddings, domestic violence, forced psychiatric hospitalization, child labor, the 2009 school year, the Big Game of pipelines, the development of monitored tourism, the agricultural system, baby names, the September 2008 shooting, drug trafficking, daily superstitions, the alphabet, nomadism, theater, cooking, the giant artificial lake in the middle of the desert, the rewriting of official history, etc.