Short story · A way to begin
Jamilia
Жамийла
Chinghiz Aitmatov · 1958
Synopsis
During the war, in a Kyrgyz village of the Talas valley, the young Seït, fifteen, looks after Djamilia, the wife of his elder brother Sadyk, who has gone to the front. With Daniyar, a demobilised soldier, lame and taciturn, they haul the sacks of wheat to the station every day. One evening, on the way back, Daniyar begins to sing, and both Djamilia and Seït discover another man in him.
Context
The story appeared in 1958, in Kyrgyz and then in Russian in the journal Novy Mir. Louis Aragon translated it into French as early as 1959 and hailed it as the most beautiful love story in the world; his preface made the author known in the West. In a literature that expected tales of heroism at the front, this one took as its subject a soldier's wife left behind in the village and a child's gaze upon her.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages, deceptively simple. The story is carried by an adolescent who draws, which gives the landscape a central place.
Prizes and reception
Translated into more than sixty languages, it remains the Central Asian text most widely read outside the region.