Novel
I See the Sun
მე ვხედავ მზეს
Nodar Dumbadze · 1962
Synopsis
Sosoia, an orphan from a village in Guria, lives with his aunt Keto, who teaches Georgian: his parents were taken away in 1937. When the war comes, the men of the village leave, letters arrive from the front, salt and flour run short, and families sell what they own in order to eat. At school, the boy shares his bench with Khatia, blind from birth, who hopes to be cured; together they take in a wounded Russian soldier.
Context
The book takes up the situation of its author, the child of a family struck in 1937 and raised by relatives in the countryside; from this come the school, the neighbours and the rear of the front. It appeared in 1962, two years after a first story that had made him an author read throughout the Union. Lana Gogoberidze made a film from it as early as 1965, written with him. The French version, made from the Russian by Dora Sanadzé, appeared in Moscow in 1970 and brought together two stories in the same volume.
Who it is for
A short narrative, in the first person and in a restrained tone. It is necessary to know that the arrest of the parents, stated in a single sentence at the beginning, is never told, and that the French version goes through Russian.
Prizes and reception
One of the stories that made its author's reputation, reprinted in 1986 in a Soviet anthology of world literature for young readers.
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