Authors

Discussion

In her novel The Fund of Last Hope: A Post-colonial Novel (2013) Kazakhstani author Lilya Kalaus describes the events in a fictional NGO ‘Last Hope’ in the imaginary country Burkutstan, the allegory of Kazakhstan. In this paper, I argue that the novel paints a satirical picture of current postcolonial and neo-colonial dynamics in Kazakhstan, especially as expressed in its nation-building and the workings of the aid sector. Kalaus satirises ‘Rukhani Zhangiru’ – the project of modernising Kazakhstan, highlighting that is seats uneasily with the country’s search for roots and consequent mythmaking around the heroes of its the ‘golden era’ past, among them the Islamic thinker Al-Farabi. Simultaneously, Kalaus critiques the neo-colonial tendencies within Kazakh NGOs. Echoing Achille Mbembe’s notion of ‘mockery from within’, the author satirises how local NGOs’ dependency on the West, and their inability to divorce themselves from Soviet influences, lead to their self-orientalising, contradictory and inefficient practices. The paper proposes that Kalaus’s novel provides one example of how literature, being one of the most neglected and thus conveniently uncensored mediums, is used as a tool of neocolonial critique in post-Soviet Central Asia. By focusing on the understudied post-Soviet cultures through a postcolonial lens, the paper also widens our understanding of global neocolonial processes and their representation in literature more broadly.