Zuleiha deschide ochii către sine
Zuleiha opens eyes towards herself

Summary/Abstract: The novel “Zuleiha opens her eyes” by Guzel Iahina is the novel of the inner fight and of the scream of help of the 1.803.392 people who were deported on the entire territory of the Russian Empire, during the period 1930-1931. It is the authentic novel, based on real heroes, which decodes the complicated period, full of poverty and unfairness, of an entire generation of people, sometimes wrongly called kulaks. The main character of the novel, Zuleiha, is a heroine who represents the key of the novel, the engine who pushes forward the action, to the limits of Siberia, in a colony of deported people. She is also the receptacle of permanent unhappiness, as she is constantly under a regime of violence near her husband Murtaza, and later on under the violence of Ignatov, the killer of her husband and commander of the colony of deported people. Although fictional, the novel is the book of an entire generation, where we can rediscover grandparents and grand grandparents, among the dark stories of the Bolshevik cruelty and despair caused by poverty and famine. But what really surprises is the fact that “Zuleiha opens her eyes” is a luminous novel, full of optimism, revealing the strength of a Tatar woman, able to overcome the difficulties of life, to forgive and forget and continue, until she finds her inner peace, in a world and during some petrified times, similarly to the souls of those who had been able to put in practice this diabolic plan of the communist collectivization.

• Details
• Contents