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WINNER OF THE BIG BOOK AWARD, THE LEO TOLSTOY YASNAYA POLYANA AWARD AND THE BEST PROSE WORK OF THE YEAR AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 READ RUSSIA PRIZE
RUNNER-UP FOR THE EBRD LITERATURE PRIZE, 2020
Zuleikha is the model of a dutiful wife. Biddible and meek, she has resigned herself to brutal treatment at the hands of her cruel husband and the carping of her despotic mother-in-law. While Russia reels in the aftermath of its recent revolution, life in her small Tatar village is relatively untouched. Or so it seems to Zuleikha, until the day her husband is executed by communist soldiers.
Zuleikha is exiled to Siberia and forced to leave behind everything she knows. Yet in that harsh, desolate wilderness, she begins to build a new life for herself and discovers an inner strength she never knew she had. This is a supremely ambitious epic about one woman's determination, not only to survive, but to flourish in the face of the greatest adversity.
Guzel Yakhina
Guzel Yakhina (b. 1977 Kazan, Tatarstan) is a Russian author and filmmaker of Tatar origins. She graduated from the Kazan State Pedagogical University and completed her PhD at the Moscow Filmmaking School. Zuleikha is her first novel.
More by Guzel Yakhina
Lisa C. Hayden
Translated by
Lisa C. Hayden’s translations from the Russian include Eugene Vodolazkin’s Solovyov and Larionov, The Aviator, and Laurus, which won the Read Russia Award in 2016 and was also shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize along with her translation of Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina. Her blog, Lizok’s Bookshelf, examines contemporary Russian fiction. She lives in Maine.
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