Alisa Ganieva

In The Mountain and the Wall, Shamil, a young journalist in Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, hears rumours that the Russian government intends to build a wall separating the Muslim regions of the North Caucasus from the rest of the country. As anxiety and unrest spread, Shamil finds himself confronting the political and religious divisions shaping his community. What begins as distant speculation gradually becomes an urgent personal and social crisis, forcing him to reconsider his own passivity. Ganieva portrays a region caught between competing ideologies, traditional beliefs, and the pressures of modern political life. Through Shamil’s experiences, the novel explores how intolerance and extremism can fracture communities and how ordinary people respond when the society around them begins to unravel.