Parables from the Past: The Prose Fiction of Chingiz Aitmatov

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University of Pittsburgh Pre, Aug 15, 1994 - Literary Criticism - 230 pages
James Mozur traces the development of Chingiz Aitmatov's fiction from the early 1950s through the mid-1970s, including Farewell, Gul'sary!, The White Ship, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, and The Place of the Skull. He discusses each major work against the political and cultural background in which it was created and thereby widens our understanding of post-Stalinist Soviet literature.

Chingiz Aitmatov was born in Kirghizstan in 1928 and published his first stories in the 1950s in both Russian and Kirghiz. He soon took his place as spokesman for the progressive wing of official Soviet Russian literature, striving for greater openness in Soviet letters and for a new approach toward diverse nationalities. Unlike many other writers, Aitmatov continued to flourish in the cultural tumult following the collapse of the communist state, being appointed to government posts by Gorbachev and becoming Soviet ambassador to Luxembourg in 1991.
 

Contents

Introduction
3
1 Aitmatov and Kirghizstan
11
2 First Steps
25
3 Farewell Gulsary Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past
39
Outcry in a Soulless World
56
Confronting and Transcending Soviet Reality
75
Defining Soviet Mankurtization
96
New Thinking and The Place of the Skull
130
Conclusion
159
Afterword
171
Notes
175
Bibliography
203
Index
207
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About the author (1994)

Joseph P. Mozur, Jr. is professor of foreign languages at the University of South Alabama.

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