An interview with Zira Nauryzbai and Lilya Kalaus in partnership* with The Children’s Book Review and Amazon Crossing Kids.
In this insightful interview, co-authors Zira Nauryzbai and Lilya Kalaus talk about their book Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup, which Shelley Fairweather-Vega has translated. The discussion offers insights into the authors’ creative process and provides a glimpse into the story’s plot and characters.
“A promising series opener that journeys into a thrilling world.”
Kirkus Reviews
Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup has been well received by readers and critics alike, and it offers a unique perspective on the themes of adventure, friendship, and cultural exploration. The authors bring a wealth of experience and expertise to the book, and their passion for storytelling is evident on every page. Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup is a compelling and engaging read that will appeal to readers of all ages.
Be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of the interview for your chance to win a copy of Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup!
Which five words (or phrases) best describe Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup?
Zira Nauryzbai and Lilya Kalaus: Connection with ancestors, initiation, music, friendship, adventure.
Can you share your thoughts about a highlight from the book (include an excerpt of your favorite sentence, paragraph, or page)?
Lilya Kalaus: I really liked the scene where the kuyishi was chatting with Sasha about what a motherland is. Sasha feels guilty about being Russian in Kazakhstan, and Russia effectively colonizing Kazakhstan in the past. The kuyishi, however, talks about a motherland being where your first droplets of blood fall while cutting the umbilical cord. There are a lot of people of different ethnicities living in Kazakhstan, and it is important for us, the Kazakh people, to remember where we were born and to know our history and mythology.
Zira Nauryzbai: The protagonist at the beginning of the book is a victim of bullying in school. He is a bit of a coward, and because of that, his new friend, a saka prince Aspara, almost died. Batu is very worried about it, and it also turns out that he has to go into unknown dangerous territory to save his childhood friend, Dana. Before Batu leaves, Aspara says to him: “Remember, Batu: kindness and courage are one and the same.” Later, when Batu goes through initiation to become a knight, Batu receives a blessing: “Be a warrior but never an executioner.” These come from words that were actually used in ancient Kazakh initiation rituals.
The theme of positive masculinity in the book is also very important, especially today.
Why are books like Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup great additions to a child’s home library?
Lilya Kalaus: Well, an author would typically not be shy when answering this question. But if I were to give a more objective answer, I believe that the book helps to answer a lot of questions that young people of 11-12 years of age might be struggling with. And it’s not limited to any specific nation or ethnicity either.
Questions like: What does it mean to take responsibility for your actions? How important it is to know the history of your family, your people, your country? Is trusting a weakness or strength? How do you stand up for yourself in the face of bullying? And maybe the most important one: How can you overcome your fears?
Zira Nauryzbai: Yes, in essence, our 11-year-old characters are going through initiation. I also want American readers to learn about Central Asia. We were trying to tell the kids about Stalin’s repressions and about colonization. And the current political situation has suddenly made some of the themes in the book even more relevant.
What has been the most rewarding reaction from a reader so far?
Lilya Kalaus: When we released the first book, a lot of children shared their impressions with us, but the main question was: “When are we going to see the second book?” which became a good motivation for our further work.
Zira Nauryzbai: I was at a dentist when she suddenly asked while working in my mouth, “When are you going to write the sequel? My grandson keeps asking me to buy him the next book.” But of course, the most important reaction was my daughter’s. I, a cultural anthropologist and writer, started writing Batu with Lilya for our children.
In 2005 our kids were obsessed with Harry Potter, and my attempts at telling my daughter about our own mythology fell on deaf ears. Me and Lilya decided to write a children’s book to add information about Kazakh culture to an interesting story. It seemed absurd that our book market was mostly dominated by Russian publishers, and bookstores just didn’t take the books written by Kazakh authors.
We started the writing process, and I offered my nine-year-old daughter the opportunity to name a heroine with her name, but she responded with, “Yeah right, everyone will be laughing at me. You should take my friend Dana’s name.”
We didn’t take just Dana’s name but also her appearance and some of her personality as well. I gave what we wrote to my daughter to read, and she returned it and said, “It’s boring” eight times straight. On the ninth try, she said, “Not bad, continue writing,” and after a few more chapters, she asked, “Can I give it to Dana to read as well?” And a bit later: “Can I be in the book as well?” And that’s how suddenly my daughter became a character inside the book named “Khadisha,” and her father became “the kuyishi.” Sasha was inspired by Lilya’s son as well.
What are your preferred writing tools: computer, pen and paper, or all of the above?
Lilya Kalaus: We write on PC, using Google Documents. It is a very convenient application. We discuss the story, then the contents of a chapter, and then type out the text in detail. Due to how the program allows us to share access to the same file, we take turns writing the text and simultaneously editing.
Zira Nauryzbai: I take notes in my notebook, but the main work is done on PC. We also talk on the phone, as we live in different cities.
For your writing energy: sugar or salt, tea or coffee?
Lilya Kalaus: Tea and sugar. Although instead of sugar, I use sugar substitutes.
Zira Nauryzbai: I take walks out in nature, but when making Batu it’s usually chatting with Lilya. During the writing of the third book, I noticed that without Lilya I didn’t even want to come up with anything, only gathering and thinking through the material. I wish we could work offline out somewhere in nature, rather than just online as we do most of the time nowadays.
Can you tell us something even your most loyal fans may not know about you?
Lilya Kalaus: When I was little, my grandmother, who went through famine, war, and forceful relocation from Crimea to Central Asia during Stalin’s repressions, fed me too well, and by the time I was six I was round like a ball, but wanted to be a ballerina.
Zira Nauryzbai: When I was young I really loved Jules Verne novels and other Robinsonade adventures.
What’s the last thing you experienced that made you laugh or cry?
Zira Nauryzbai: On June 2nd I took part in the summer school of visual anthropology in the peninsula of Mangystau near the Caspian Sea. It’s the bottom of the prehistoric Tethys Ocean and it’s a jaw-dropping region of Kazakhstan that still has the feel of the Kazakh mythos. My family roots are from here, and during the expedition there were many reasons for tears and laughter.
When I was there, I paid a visit to an eighty-year-old relative who knew a lot of things about the history of the land. He told me that prior to the Bolshevik revolution, my great-grandpa was the owner of the land. That meant my grandma, who died in 1934, grew up in that gorge. Formally speaking, the famine that was led by Stalin, which killed approximately forty- to seventy-percent of the Kazakh people, ended in 1932. But the Kazakh people who survived continued dying of starvation and illnesses.
My grandma died at the age of 30, and my father was only 2 years old at the time. I almost know nothing of her; there weren’t any of her belongings or photos of her left. At night I was crying, imagining how she would have loved me and would have spoiled me, as everyone described her as such a gentle and kind person. I could’ve visited her family in Sulukapi with her when I was little, played on those beautiful mountains, and searched for shark teeth and coral. Maybe, if things had been different, water wouldn’t have left those places.
Lilya Kalaus: I cry fairly often, maybe it’s just my sentimental nature. But lately, tears mainly come when I read the news or see photos of the war in Ukraine on social media. I, like many others, deep down still can’t believe that this is happening. That Russia attacked Ukraine, that for one and a half years people have been dying, cities are being destroyed, that water reservoirs are being exploded, and that children are being kidnapped, among other things—and all for Putin’s insatiable lust for power.
In the third book of the Batu series, titled Batu in the Star Land of Aidala, the main antagonist, the bear Shahrukh, starts a war in the star land as he doesn’t want to peacefully give his position of power away. The image of a bear has astral signs. They personify the polar star, and of course, Russia—although that wasn’t intentional, and the book itself was released in 2019. So it can be said that we by accident predicted a lot of the current events.
Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
Zira Nauryzbai: I want to say thanks to our amazing translator, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, who not only translated the book faithfully while keeping all the nuances in mind but also assisted us heavily when entering the American book market. I also want to say thank you to the publishing team, and especially to our editor Marilyn Brigham and to the cover artist Vivienne To, as well as to all the readers.
Lilya Kalaus: I agree with Zira: Shelley, you’re amazing! I was very glad that Batu and his friends started to speak English, and I hope our book does well in finding a new audience! When I imagine a boy or a girl from another country, or at another side of the world, picking up our book and starting to read, and seeing different episodes of Kazakh history, the fairy tale characters, and the scenery of my motherland, my heart skips a beat in both fear and hope. What if they don’t like it? What if they will think it’s boring? No, not happening! So I’m believing in the American readers and hoping for our book to be recognized!
About the Book
Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup
Written by Zira Nauryzbai and Lilya Kalaus
Translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Ages 8+ | 318 Pages
Publisher: Amazon Crossing Kids | ISBN-13: 9781662507021
Publisher’s Synopsis: A warrior’s power lies not in his weapons but in his heart.
Batu is just an ordinary kid in present-day Almaty, worried about bullies, school, and his mom’s new baby…until the day he meets Aspara, the Golden Warrior. Aspara steps straight out of Batu’s notebook cover―and out of Kazakhstan’s past. Aspara has been waiting hundreds of years to be summoned to the human world and to finally get his chance to search for the Golden Cup, a magical talisman sent down from the heavens. When the Golden Cup was lost, Aspara watched as many of his friends and family were killed or disappeared.
Craving adventure and a sense of purpose, Batu sets out with Aspara and his own friends to find the Golden Cup, plunging them into an adventure through a world where myths come alive. But there are others looking for the Cup, and they’ll do anything to make sure the kids fail. Will Batu and his friends make it out alive (and make it home in time for dinner)?
“Fans of fantasy adventures such as the Pandava series and Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond will enjoy the easy-to-root-for characters and familiar tropes that populate this action-packed tale.”
Publishers Weekly
Buy the Book
About the Authors and Translator
About the Authors
Zira Nauryzbai is a writer and cultural anthropologist. She is the author of multiple books and of more than three hundred articles, all written in Russian. She is also a translator from Kazakh into Russian. She is the coauthor, with Lilya Kalaus, of Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup (and its sequels), which was a bestseller in Kazakhstan. Links to her publications can be found at www.otuken.kz. She is currently based in Astana, Kazakhstan. In her free time, Zira volunteers in the search for petroglyphs, rides horses, and practices shooting from a traditional Turkic bow.
Lilya Kalaus is a philologist, author, literary editor, scriptwriter, radio presenter, visual artist, and creative writing teacher from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her stories and narratives have been published in various magazines and online periodicals in Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Germany, Ukraine, and the US. Lilya is the author of seven books, both for kids (together with Zira Nauryzbai) and for adults. Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup was a bestseller in Kazakhstan and became a series that now includes three books. Lilya is a member of the Writers’ Union of Kazakhstan and the Kazakh PEN Club, and she runs her own publishing company.
Learn more at www.kalaus.tilda.ws.
Shelley Fairweather-Vega is a translator who works from Russian and Uzbek into English. She has translated for attorneys, academics, authors, and activists around the world. Her translated works have been published in the US and UK, and in the Critical Flame, Translation Review, Words Without Borders, the Brooklyn Rail, and more. Shelley is a past president of the Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society and a co-founder of the Northwest Literary Translators. She lives in Seattle, where she also plays the French horn and is helping raise two kids and a cat.
Learn more at www.fairvega.com.
Book Giveaway
Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup Book GiveawayThis interview—Zira Nauryzbai and Lilya Kalaus Discuss Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup—was conducted between Zira Nauryzbai, Lilya Kalaus, and Bianca Schulze.
54 Comments
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