In 1896, mere months after revealing their revolutionary cinematograph in Lyon, the Lumière Brothers dispatched a team of operators around the globe to showcase the new device and capture moving images for international circulation. Among this cadre of pioneering cinematographers was Alexandre Promio, who traveled to Spain, England, and Italy, before embarking on a journey to Algeria in December that same year. This broader story is part of my forthcoming book,

Sadriddin Aini (b. 1878), the “founder of Soviet Tajik prose,” published his final literary work, Reminiscences ( Yoddoshto) in 1949. [1] A poet, essayist, literary critic and fiction writer, Aini produced a large and varied body of work from the years just preceding the Revolution’s arrival in Central Asia up to his death in 1954. Writing in the Persian vernacular of the Ferghana Valley, where he was raised, he helped to create and codify Tajik as a literary language that could give expression...