Days Gone By (Translated) - A Novel of Old Tashkent #1010905

This edition includes:
• New English translation
• Critical introduction

One glance across a courtyard in Margilan, and the young merchant Otabek is lost — and with him begins the story that became a founding work of Uzbek literature: a novel of love, intrigue and power in the last decades of the Khanate of Kokand.

Otabek, educated son of the counselor Yusufbek Haji, comes to Margilan on business and falls in love with Kumushbibi, daughter of the qutidor Mirzakarim. Between them stand the customs of their world, the scheming of a determined rival, and the casual violence of a khanate tearing itself apart. Around them Abdulla Qodiriy unfolds a whole society: feuding factions, self-seeking begs, rulers who govern by fear, and — at the edge of the horizon — a Russian power the characters can see coming and cannot stop. It is at once a tender love story, a sharp comedy of voices, and a clear-eyed portrait of how power works when nobody is held to account.

Qodiriy's novel is widely regarded as the first great modern Uzbek novel, and this edition brings it to English-language readers in a literary translation made to be read today: natural, vivid, alive on the page, and faithful to the substance, the voice, the tone and the imagery of the original.

Opening the volume is a critical introduction that maps the novel's world, its people and its arguments, giving you a companion for the journey before the story itself begins.

Add Days Gone By to your library, and let Qodiriy's Margilan and Tashkent take hold of you.