Manas from Heaven

A national week-long festival at the end of August will be the highlight of a year of aspirations for the people of Kyrgyzstan. The United Nations has designated 1995 as 'the year of the celebration of the millennium of the Kyrgyz national epic, Manas'. If that sounds something of a mouthful, so is the epic. Depending on the version, Manas can take anything from thirty-six hours to three weeks to recite.

It may seem odd to base a UN year on a little-known epic poem, but not only are Manas and its eponymous hero profoundly significant symbols of national identity for the Kyrgyz; the epic is also 'a gold-mine for world literature', according to Dan Prior, an American expert on Kyrgyzstan, one of the few Westerners with any real knowledge of the country's culture.

The Republic of Kyrgyzstan as such has only been in existence since December 1990. Prior to that, from 1936, it was the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, after being incorporated into the Russian empire in 1876.