Silk Mirage: Through the Looking-Glass in Uzbekistan - Joanna Lillis

Silk Mirage: Through the Looking Glass in Uzbekistan - Joanna Lillis

A conversation with Nicholas Wood

Silk Mirage opens with the death of Ismail Karimov, despotic ruler of this country of desert and steppe and the fabled cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, in 2016. It closes with a question: is his successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev the democrat he claims to be?

Foreign correspondent Joanna Lillis introduces us to Karimov’s daughter Gulnara, whose ‘vulturine romp’ through the nation’s assets left her $1bn better off, a shady Islamist group and a cotton industry that has dried the Aral Sea. Throw in brides in frou-frou dresses and a penal system that punishes ‘peeling carrots incorrectly,’ and the mirage is complete.

Lillis talks to Nicholas Wood, formerly of the New York Times. Kindly sponsored by Political Tours