French and African Letters

Were I to look for a metaphor that captured best the "history" of this book, an annotated English translation of Ismail Gasprali's "French and African Letters", I could perhaps argue that this book is an "unplanned child", gifted to me by my research for the book I am writing on the Muslim Women of Late Imperial Russia. What projected it into being, however, was my deep frustration with the pernicious paucity of materials tahat can sound the voices of the Muslims of the Russian empire to an English speaking audience.