Short stories
Bir shökim bult
Not translated into English
Abish Kekilbayev · 1966
Synopsis
The long short story that gives the collection its title follows Aqqaimaq, a young woman from a Kazakh aul whom the war has deprived of her family: her father dies at the front, her mother, left a widow, dies of grief, then the husband she had married for love falls in turn. Consumed by the illness the war has left her, she does not give in and answers misfortune with work; having become the wife of a disabled man, Taibagar, she sets out alone on horseback to look for a lost camel and spends the night in an old shepherd's yurt. Other women of the aul, such as Maira, bear the same mourning.
Context
The volume appeared from Jazouchy in 1966 and brings together a long short story and tales; its author, who had made his literary debut in 1962, had just entered prose. The journal Ana tili notes in the story its epic vision and its portraits of women left without men during the conflict. Massaget stresses a narration that mixes narrative, dialogue and interior monologue, an art of portraiture that he compares to Auezov's, and an epigraph in which the writer dedicates the book to the sisters-in-law who had comforted his childhood.
Who it is for
A story of the home front, to be read for its female figures of the steppe and for the richness of its images.
Prizes and reception
The newspaper Ana tili counts Aqqaimaq and Maira among the strongest women in the author's prose.