Find me in Hearts
Poems and diaries

Translated by John Farndon and Maftuna Dunyo

Khosiat Rustam

Published by Mundus Artium Press

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From the Media

FIND ME IN HEARTS MARKS U.S. DEBUT OF UZBEK LITERARY STAR KHOSIAT RUSTAM

Dallas, Texas — Mundus Artium Press announces the publication of Find Me in Hearts, poems and diaries by Khosiat Rustam. Currently based in Tashkent, the historic capital of the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan, Rustam is a famed poet, writer, playwright, translator and literary editor whose works have been published in many languages beyond her native country.

Find Me in Hearts represents the second English-language collection of Rustam's work and the first to be published in the U.S. The book's release comes soon after the author's residency at the renowned University of Iowa International Writers Program. Like Rustam's U.K. debut, the 2020 release Colorful Tears, the Find Me in Hearts is co-translated by award-winning British writer, poet, playwright and translator John Farndon together with an Uzbek collaborator, acclaimed poet and translator Maftuna Dunyo.

The pairing of poetry and diaries in Find Me in Hearts provides a precious opportunity for readers to know Rustam more fully. The writer's finely crafted poetry, tastefully translated by Farndon and Dunyo, is hauntingly lyrical and marked by unflinchingly sincere reflections on life, love, mortality and fate. Her impressionistic, often enigmatic diary entries take up similar themes, but in a differently captivating style — improvisational, unorthodox and unapologetically willful, expanding the bounds of her passion, freedom and insight in the moment through empowering self-expression, generously leavened with ironic self-awareness.

The book features an introduction by Gjekë Marinaj, PhD, who provides perspective on Rustam's unconventional personality, steadfast humanist and spiritual values, and ardous emergence as a writer.

Readers learn that Rustam, while encouraged by lofty recognition from literary and cultural authorities, has also suffered from years of agonizing writer's block in the course of establishing her stature as a leading voice for world literature in her native culture.

Find Me in Hearts is among the fruits of Rustam's gifts' restoration — a miracle the writer attributes to the power of literature itself. Deeply devoted to an ideal of communing with the spirits of great writers of the past as well as peers in the present, Rustam has a remarkable affinity for the Russian classic Alexander Pushkin, with whom she maintains a constant inner dialogue.

Since 2015, Rustam has served as editor-in-chief of Uzbekistan’s literary newspaper, Kitab Dunyosi. In her daily life, she balances creativity and professional duties with those of a typical wife and mother in Uzbek society. While doing so, she has amassed an impressive roster of literary awards and achievements. Yet as Marinaj's introduction notes, Rustam "contends that no recognition or admiration can surpass what is conferred by a higher power."