Sadyk is born in the mountains of Azerbaijan, and on the very day he begins his tumultuous life, he loses his mother. He\u2019s raised by his father, Nadzhaf, who sells muskmelons grown on the village\u2019s collective farm, and his Aunt Medina. One day, with little ceremony, Nadzhaf announces that he\u2019s sold the family\u2019s cow and will leave town, likely never to return; he\u2019s been conscripted to fight against the German fascists in the war, and author Aylisli heartbreakingly renders the character\u2019s farewell to his loved ones: \u201cI\u2019ll say what I must. I stand guilty before you, Medina: I\u2019ve driven you into this wretched hole. I\u2019m not coming back. Forgive me, for God\u2019s sake!\u201d He never does return, and Sadyk is raised by Medina and her belligerent husband, Mukush, who\u2019s bitter about the fact that his grandfather\u2019s land has been commandeered by a newly established Soviet collective. Mukush is called to war, as well, and the village is stripped of its able men by a conflict that, as Sadyk sees it, is \u201cpoisoning every living thing around it.\u201d In this haunting work, expertly translated from Russian by Young, Aylisli chronicles the transformation of the village through the maturing eyes of Sadyk, who grows from a bookish boy into a student headed for university. The author vividly portrays how Soviet ideology aggressively alters traditional ways of life, as when a factory is sacrilegiously built within a building that houses a mosque. For all its political insight, though, the novel\u2019s heart is its depiction of the relationship between Sadyk and Aunt Medina; even during the most troubled of times, the protagonist takes great solace in believing that \u201cthere [is] just the two of us in this endless expanse.\u201d Overall, this is a remarkable work that\u2019s historically edifying and dramatically arresting.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sadyk is born in the mountains of Azerbaijan, and on the very day he begins his tumultuous life, he loses his mother. He\u2019s raised by his father, Nadzhaf, who sells muskmelons grown on the village\u2019s collective farm, and his Aunt Medina. One day, with little ceremony, Nadzhaf announces that he\u2019s sold the family\u2019s cow and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}