Dark Shadows is a compelling portrait of Kazakhstan, a country that is little known in the West. Strategically located in the heart of Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin's Russia, its former colonial ruler, and Xi Jinping's China, this vast oil-rich state is carving out its place in the world as it contends with its own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage based on 13 years of on-the-ground coverage, and travels across the length and breadth of this enigmatic country that lies along the ancient Silk Road and at the geopolitical and cultural crossroads where East meets West. Featuring tales of murder and abduction, intrigue and betrayal, extortion and corruption, this book explores how a president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, transformed himself into a potentate and the economically-struggling state he inherited at the fall of the USSR into a swaggering 21st-century monocracy. A colourful cast of characters brings the politics to life: from strutting oligarch to sleeping villagers, from principled politicians to striking oilmen, from crusading journalists to courageous campaigners. Traversing dust-blown deserts and majestic mountains, taking in glitzy cities and dystopian landscapes, Dark Shadows conjures up Kazakhstan as a living, breathing place, full of extraordinary people living extraordinary lives.

Money is flooding into Kazakhstan. The country is home to vast gas and oil deposits, and its staggering level of international investment is increasing year by year. And yet, Kazakhstan effectively looks and feels like a Cold War state. Its president for the last 26 years, Nazarbayev, is a ruthless dictator who believes in telepathy (visitors to national monuments can place their hands on a golden handprint and send him telepathic messages) and recently constructed a 56-metre glass pyramid in which 100 Kazakhstani religious leaders will meet to discuss the future of the world.

This book teases out the strange and fascinating conditions of present-day Kazakhstan - a state haunted by disappearances, buried Uranium mines, corruption, and gangsterdom at the highest levels of power. Joanna Lillis is a compelling storyteller and a shrewd social critic; her study evokes a country simultaneously lost in its complex past and poised to move into the foreground of world affairs.

This is the essential book about an increasingly important, but highly secretive, country. With a keen eye and sharp analysis, Joanna Lillis goes beyond the 'post-Soviet' cliches to explore the depths of Kazakhstan's politics, history and money