Shelley Fairweather-Vega w/ Aria Fani, WE COMPUTERS: A GHAZAL NOVEL

Translator Shelley Fairweather-Vega visits the store to discuss her translation of Hamid Ismailov’s We Computers: A Ghazal Novel, a multilayered exploration of poetry, authorship, and digital intelligence. She is joined by UW professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Aria Fani.

In the late 1980s, French poet and psychologist Jon‑Perse finds himself in possession of one of the most promising inventions of the century: a computer. Enchanted by snippets of Persian poetry he learns from his Uzbek translation partner, Abdulhamid Ismail, Jon-Perse builds a computer program capable of both analyzing and generating literature. But beyond the text on his screen there are entire worlds—of history, philosophy, and maybe even of love—in the stories and people he and AI conjure.

Hamid Ismailov brings together his work as a poet, translator, and student of literature of both East and West to craft a postmodern ode to poetry across centuries and continents. Crossing the poètes maudits with beloved Sufi classics, blending absurdist dreams with the life of the famed Persian poet Hafez, moving from careful mathematical calculations to lyrical narratives, Ismailov invents an ingenious transnational poetics of love and longing for the digital age. Situated at the crossroads of a multilingual world and mediated by the unreliable sensibilities of digital intelligence, this book is a dazzling celebration of how poetry resonates across time and space.

Shelley Fairweather-Vega is a professional translator in Seattle specializing in new prose and poetry from Central Asia. She holds degrees in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington. She is the translator of several novels by Hamid Ismailov, including, most recently, We Computers; essays and short stories by Uzbek and Kazakhstani writers, including in the anthology Amanat; and coming in September, Castigation by Sultan Raev, her first translation from Kyrgyzstan.

Aria Fani is an assistant professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Washington, Seattle. At UW, he co-directs the Middle East Center at the Jackson School for International Studies and serves as a co-investigator of the Translation Studies Hub. Aria’s first book, Reading across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism, was published by the University of Texas Press in April 2024 and its Persian translation has been published by Shirazeh Press in Tehran. He is the co-translator of Shape of Extinction, a book-length collection of Bijan Jalali’s poems. In addition to teaching and research, Aria engages in social advocacy for non-citizen Americans, particularly asylum seekers from Central America.

Pre-order your copy of We Computers here.

Host or Publisher Elliott Bay Book Company