Novel
Soul
Dzhan
Andrei Platonov · 1935
Synopsis
Nazar Chagataev, son of a Dzhan woman and a Russian soldier from Khiva, is finishing his economics studies in Moscow. He becomes attached to Vera, a student pregnant by a dead man, then sets out, charged with bringing socialism to his native people, the Dzhan, fugitives, orphans and expelled slaves who possess nothing but their soul. After a long journey by train and then by boat on the Amu Darya, he finds them wretched and without strength in the Sary-Kamysh delta, where his mother does not recognise him.
Context
In 1934, thanks to the support of Gorky, the author took part in a trip of writers to Central Asia, and he returned to Turkmenistan the following year; he brought back the narrative Takyr and this short novel, completed in 1935. The word djann comes from Persian and means the soul. The narrative then leads this people across the Karakum towards the Ustyurt plateau. During the author's lifetime, only selected chapters appeared; an expurgated version came out in 1966, and the full text in 1999.
Who it is for
In Russian, in a singular language; French has several versions of it, including the complete one by Louis Martinez in 1999 and that of Lucile Nivat, reissued in 2023.
Prizes and reception
Counted among its author's famous works; translated into English by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and taken up in 2007 in the New York Review of Books classics.