The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini
SynopsisPlot
The first volume of Aini's unfinished Reminiscences is a first-person account both of a traditional Iranian-Islamic society on the eve of a fateful transition, and of a precocious boy's rites of passage to literary preeminence. The two autobiographical novellas included here, "The Village School" and "Ahmad the Exorcist," detail Sadriddin's chaotic schooldays and his brushes with homemade fireworks, superstition and irrational fear.
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About this book
Sadriddin Aini is widely regarded as a founding figure of modern Tajik literature. The Sands of Oxus presents the first volume of his unfinished Reminiscences, a memoir written in the first person that looks back on his childhood in pre-revolutionary Uzbekistan. The account describes a traditional Iranian-Islamic society at a moment of approaching change, seen through the eyes of a bright, observant boy growing up within its customs and contradictions.
Alongside the memoir, the book includes two autobiographical novellas. The Village School follows Sadriddin through the disorder of his early education, while Ahmad the Exorcist recounts his encounters with superstition and irrational fear. Both stories carry a tone of personal detail, depicting fireworks made by hand, the chaos of a schoolroom, and the weight that folk belief placed on daily life. Together, the novellas fill out the picture of a childhood shaped by forces the young Sadriddin was only beginning to understand.
The Oxus River of the title, known today as the Amu Darya, runs through Central Asia and has long served as a geographic and cultural boundary in the region. Aini's memoir is rooted in that landscape and in the specific social world it sustained before the upheavals of the twentieth century.
