Novel
Oʻlmas qoyalar
Not translated into English
Mamadali Mahmudov · 1981
Synopsis
Turkestan at the end of the nineteenth century, as the tsar's troops seize the khanates. The hero dreams of uniting the Turkic peoples and takes up arms against the Russian invader, alongside those who refuse to submit. The conquest is told there as an invasion paid for in the blood of a multitude, and not as the consensual annexation of a region to an empire.
Context
The novel appeared in 1981 in the journal Sharq yulduzi. It was first read as a book conforming to socialist realism; then the authorities withdrew the copies of the journal, the author lost his post in the writers' organisation and was for a long time on the KGB's lists. A few years later, he was pressed to disown his book, and he refused. The novel has since been published in Germany, Turkey and France, where Philippe Frison translated it in 2008.
Who it is for
In Uzbek, and in French since 2008. A historical novel, which assumes a general knowledge of the Russian conquest of Central Asia.
Prizes and reception
It earned its author, after independence and during his detention, the Choʻlpon Prize, which bears the name of a writer shot in 1938.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.