Jamilia
Chingiz Aitmatov author James Riordan translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Saqi Books
Published:9th Jul '07
Should be back in stock very soon
Jamilia’s husband is off fighting at the front. She spends her days hauling sacks of grain from the threshing floor to the train station in their small village, accompanied by Seit, her brother-in-law, and Daniyar, a sullen newcomer who has been wounded in the war and has barely spoken since he arrived.
Seit, too young to fight himself, looks on as the beautiful, spirited Jamilia spurns men’s advances and winces at the dispassionate letters she receives from her husband. Meanwhile, undeterred by Jamilia’s teasing, Daniyar sings as they return each evening from the fields. As the summer unfolds, Jamilia and Daniyar grow closer, while the war on the Soviet front drags on.
Against the vast landscapes of Kyrgyzstan, Jamilia is a luminous classic of Central Asian literature: a story of love, freedom and the irresistible pull of another life.
'The most beautiful love story in the world' -- Louis Aragon
'An extremely brave, tremblingly vivid and skilful writer - a song that flew against the ideology of the time, showing that life is always bigger and more complicated than any superimposed schemes.' -- Hamid Ismailov, author of The Railway
'The novella most vibrantly comes to life is in its evocation of the local landscapes and folk traditions... James Riordan has rendered Aitmatov's prose into simple yet lyrical English' -- The Telegraph
'Deftly renders village life in vivid colour' -- The Times
'Aitmatov showed the world as he saw it: full of bigotry, prejudice, cruelty, sexism, patriarchal brutality, and general lack of harmony in the way people treat each other. All this is punctuated by beautiful scenes of human kindness, wisdom, love and devotion, set against the background of the stunning central Asian landscape which he poetically evoked.' -- Booktrust
'A beautiful love story ... the relationship that grows between Jamilia and co-worker Daniyar, a sullen soldier new to the village who has arrived wounded from the war, is subtle and beautifully developed.' -- Bookseller
ISBN: 9781846590320
Dimensions: 200mm x 130mm x 19mm
Weight: 104g
96 pages