From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

Jamilia

Chingiz Aitmatov

Start date: October 15, 2016

Finish date: November 15, 2016

Discussion: Group Reads Discussions

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 405 topics — 3,825 comments total

Group Reads Discussions

This topic has been closed to new comments.

* Links to Group Read Discussions
By Diane , Armchair Tour Guide · 3 posts · 1370 views

last updated Jan 18, 2013 07:12PM

I've Been Waiting
By Carole · 1 post · 14 views

last updated Sep 16, 2025 07:57PM

showing 10 of 49 topics view all »

What Members Thought

May 20, 2011 Kristin rated it liked it

Shelves: kyrgyzstan

Well, not quite the most beautiful love story in the world, but still definitely worth a read. I'd give it a 3.5 if I had the option. If this is a book of love, it is the love one feels for one's homeland. In that sense, it reminded me a bit of Mehmed, My Hawk which I am also currently reading... ...more

1 like · Like · see review

May 20, 2010 Daisy marked it as to-read

Shelves: uzbekistan-central-asia

Not really Uzbek...

1 like · Like · see review

Feb 16, 2022 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: novella, project-fit, adapted-for-film, setting-asia, war-ww2

There is not a lot of Kyrgyz literature available in English translation, and this novella is probably the most well-known of the lot. It was originally published in 1958 both in Russian (in the monthly Novyj Mir) and Kyrgz (in the magazine Ala-Too, under the title "Melody") before making its way into French and English the following year. It's a very straightforward story, the kind that is almost elemental in themes of family, freedom, and love. It's told by Seid, a 15-year-old Kyrgyz boy who i There is not a lot of Kyrgyz literature available in English translation, and this novella is probably the most well-known of the lot. It was originally published in 1958 both in Russian (in the monthly Novyj Mir) and Kyrgz (in the magazine Ala-Too, under the title "Melody") before making its way into French and English the following year. It's a very straightforward story, the kind that is almost elemental in themes of family, freedom, and love. It's told by Seid, a 15-year-old Kyrgyz boy who is the eldest male in a large household, as all the men have been conscripted to fight the Germans in World War II. His village, in the Talas region of northern Kyrgyzstan, just across the border from the Kazkh steppes, harvests wheat, and Seid is tasked with taking bags of grain to the rail depot ten kilometers away, along with his new sister-in-law, Jamila, and a wounded soldier demobilized from the army.

Family and tradition are central to the lives at the heart of the story -- Seid is tasked with safeguarding the honor of his absent brother's wife, who is seen as a treasured new addition to the extended family. She, in turn, is a free-spirited and beautiful woman, who's not afraid to speak up for herself. The wounded soldier, Daniyar, was orphaned and has no family, and is thus an untrusted outsider amongst the villagers. Seid is more than a little infatuated with Jamila, and over time, she and Daniyar fall into a kind of unspoken love as she comes to realize that the most she can aspire to in her new family is to take over from her mother-in-law one day.

In that sense, I wonder to what degree Jamila is meant to represent the positive aspects of modernity, as well as its threat to traditional social mores. Daniyar, as a Kyrgyz-Kazakh orphan, is similarly a man without ties to tradition, who has survived war and learned its terrible lesson. Do they represent the great Soviet project in the wake of the war? Even if readers aren't drawn to such questions, there are plenty of small pleasures to take from the story. The landscape is beautifully described, and the reader is given a strong sense of what farming collectivization looked like at the time, along with traditional Kyrgyz family structures. There are other little historical odds and ends that are also likely to catch one's attention, for example, the triangular construction of wartime Soviet letters, which I'd never heard of and immediately found examples of online.

I didn't really go for the melodramatic love tale, but at a skimpy 90 pages it's definitely worth reading by anyone with an interest in Kyrgyzstan. Over the years it's been adapted into at least three different films, but these seem to be pretty hard to find. ...more

Like · see review

Dec 16, 2019 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it liked it

Shelves: author-man, genre-fiction, a-reviewed, theme-het, publdate-1950s, genre-litfic, z-read-2019, genre-novella, transl-russian, world-kyrgyzstan

A sweet little novella about adulterous love in a Kyrgyz village set during the second world war. Here's the sort of beautiful landscape description in which it is rich:

"The wind was heady with the fragrance of apples, the aroma of honeyed, flowering corn and the warm smell of drying dung bricks."

The story is told in first person pov by a young boy.

Now why only three stars? Well, it's written by a man in 1957. And though subtle, lyrical and great at transporting you to a wild faraway land abou ...more

Like · see review