Silk Mirage is a compelling portrait of Uzbekistan, a country at the heart of the ancient silk road and now the centre of a secret power struggle in Central Asia. In 2016, the long-ruling dictator Islam Karimov – one of the last Soviet strongmen – died, sparking what was called by his successor the 'Uzbek Spring'. But, as investigative journalist Joanna Lillis shows, spring has struggled to break through in one of the world's most repressive and totalitarian states. As one of the few western journalists with access to Uzbekistan, Lillis travels deep into the heart of the Karimov regime, portraying in vivid prose all the excesses and atrocities that made it such a brutal dictatorship.

Featuring 12 chapters based on extraordinary interviews, Lillis explores Uzbekistan's politics, economics, history, arts and culture – and asks where Uzbekistan stands five years after the death of its dictator, and 500 years since it's ancient capital Samarkand was the centre of the world's trade network. We travel across the country from the water crisis of Andijan in the Fergana Valley, the centre of climate change; to Samarkand and the ruins of the great silk road, where a new open-minded generation competes with Stalin's enduring legacy of cronyism, gangsterism and corruption. Lillis weaves in the stories of ordinary people and struggling places, from ancient Jewish minorities and LGBTQ activists trying to fight for the right to live and love, to the tale of the collapsed dam in the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains.

Traversing salt deserts and the foothills of the border with China, taking in glittering cities and dystopian industrial landscapes, Silk Mirage conjures up Uzbekistan as place full of life and loss – the ancient heart of eastern civilization that shows us worrying signs of things to come.