Jamilia
SynopsisPlot
The Second World War is raging, and Jamilia’s husband is off fighting at the front. Accompanied by Daniyar, a sullen newcomer who was wounded on the battlefield, Jamilia spends her days hauling sacks of grain from the threshing floor to the train station in their village in the Caucasus. Spurning men’s advances and wincing at the dispassionate letters she receives from her husband, Jamilia falls helplessly in love with the mysterious Daniyar in this heartbreakingly beautiful tale.
Story
About this book
Jamilia is a novella by the Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, set in a rural village in Kyrgyzstan during the Second World War. With most of the men away at the front, daily life falls to those left behind. Jamilia, a young married woman whose husband is fighting in the war, spends her days transporting sacks of grain from the local threshing floor to the railway station. She is joined in this labor by Daniyar, a quiet, withdrawn man who arrived in the village after being wounded in battle.
The story follows the slow, unplanned pull between Jamilia and Daniyar as they work side by side through long days of physical effort. Jamilia receives flat, emotionless letters from her husband and brushes off the attention of other men in the village. In Daniyar she finds something different, and their closeness grows against the backdrop of wartime absence and communal expectation. The narrative is told through the eyes of a younger observer in the household, giving the events a layer of remembered distance.
The French poet Louis Aragon reportedly called Jamilia the most beautiful love story in the world, a remark that helped bring Aitmatov to international attention. First published in 1958, the novella remains one of the best-known works of Central Asian literature.
