ZULEIHA DESCHIDE OCHII – UN ROMAN EXOTERIC ȘI ESOTERIC
ZULEIHA DESCHIDE OCHII [ZULEIKHA OPENS HER EYES]) – AN EXOTERIC AND ESOTERIC NOVEL

Summary/Abstract: The writer of Tatar origin Guzel Iahina through her novel „Zuleiha opens her eyes” launches a disturbing plea for life in Russian literature. The fimale caracter, Zuleiha, an obidient young wife from a Tatar village from Kazan region, overwhelmed by the decisions of an older husband and a dominating mother-in-law, lives in a relatively comfortable exterior world. She observes the local costums, the rituals and traditions her mother taught her as a child. She comunicates only with the local spirits, with mythological beings, seemingly living in an imaginary world, stoically accepting her destiny and the unwritten laws inherited from the ancestors. The social and the political transformations brought about by the coming of the communist regim, the deportation to Siberia, the life in the colony - a place where she becomes both the witness and the victim of the grotesque brutalization around her - coagulate in a proces of the distruction of the old order. The deeply rooted conceptions will take the shape of her mather-in-law, becoming a threat of punishment for their inobservance. Her mother-in-law’s ghost seemingly brings her a message of indulgence for the enormous maternal sacrifice: determined to pay any price in order to save her son Iusuf, she helps him escape from the colony. Thus Zuleiha, through the love for her son, brings back the MAN in the light of conscience.

• Details
• Contents