Zuleikha opens her eyes

Guzel Yakhina was born and raised in Kazan, graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, and is studying at the Moscow School of Film’s screenwriting department. Her work has been published in the magazines Neva, Siberian Lights, and Oktyabr.The novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” begins in the winter of 1930 in a remote Tatar village. The peasant Zuleikha, along with hundreds of other settlers, is sent in a heated railway carriage along the perennial route of forced labor to Siberia.Uneducated peasants and Leningrad intellectuals, the dispossessed and criminals, Muslims and Christians, pagans and atheists, Russians, Tatars, Germans, Chuvash—they will all meet on the banks of the Angara, daily defending their right to live against the taiga and the ruthless state.Dedicated to all those who were dekulakized and resettled. Five Reasons to Buy 1The novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” is one of the most popular Russian-language books of the 21st century. The novel has received three prestigious awards, been translated into 40 languages, and served as the basis for a popular television series. It is a book unanimously acclaimed by readers, viewers, critics, and scholars, which attests to its unprecedented significance. 2The new illustrated edition makes the book’s complex fictional world come alive. Anna Zaitseva’s illustrations do more than simply assist the reader: they provide new food for thought. 3Anna Zaitseva’s illustrations were well received by the author. This is a unique opportunity to view the world of the book from a different perspective and see how Yakhina herself envisioned the events and characters of her novel. 4“Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” is a book about a small person and big history: it is a saga about overcoming fear, pain, and hatred through the power of love and mutual aid. Perhaps it is one of the most humane books about inhumane times. 5This is a book about a woman who managed to “open her eyes”—to emerge from a state of oppression and subjugation and become a vibrant, free, independent individual under extraordinary circumstances.