Ak Welsapar

About

Ak Welsapar is a Turkmen-Swedish novelist, poet, and journalist born in 1956 in the former Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan. He studied journalism at Moscow State University, graduating in 1979, and later earned a second master’s degree in literary theory from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow in 1989. His writing addresses political repression, environmental destruction, cultural identity, and the lives of ordinary people under authoritarian rule. Welsapar faced persecution after publishing investigative journalism critical of the authorities and environmental mismanagement in Central Asia. Following a period of house arrest and the banning of his works, he left Turkmenistan in 1993 and settled in Sweden in 1994. Many of his books remain prohibited in his homeland. He writes in Turkmen, Russian, and Swedish and has published more than twenty books, including novels, poetry collections, short stories, and children’s literature. His notable works include The Melon Head, Cobra, and The Revenge of the Foxes. The Tale of Aypi, originally published in Turkmenistan in 2012 and translated into English by W. M. Coulson in 2016, combines folklore and political allegory to examine resistance, injustice, and attachment to one’s homeland. The novel received a Swedish cultural award in 2016, and Welsapar has also been recognised by the International PEN Club and literary organisations in Russia and Ukraine. He continues to live and write in Sweden.