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Sands of Oxus:
Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini
Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini
Translated from the Tajik Persian with an Introduction by
John R. Perry and Rachel Lehr
Sadriddin Aini (1878-1954) was one of the reformist intellectuals of Russian-ruled Central
Asia (Jadids) who in the early 1920s joined the Bolsheviks to overthrow the Emirate of
Bukhara and propagate the revolution in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. As the leading Tajik
(Persian-speaker) among predominantly Uzbek (Turkish-speaking) colleagues, he was
instrumental in establishing a distinctive Tajik Persian language and literature, written
first in Latin characters and, from 1940, in Cyrillic. Aini's voluminous oeuvre
(encompassing poetry, fiction, journalism, history and lexicography), while steering
safely close to Stalin's party line, helped to preserve a Tajik national consciousness
that has survived the collapse of the USSR. Today it is building a post-Soviet identity
through closer links with its Iranian culture and fellow Persian-speakers abroad.
The first volume of Aini's unfinished Reminiscences is a first-person account both of a
traditional Iranian-Islamic society on the eve of a fateful transition, and of a
precocious boy's rites of passage to literary preeminence. The two autobiographical
novellas included here, "The Village School" and "Ahmad the Exorcist,"
detail Sadriddin's chaotic schooldays and his brushes with homemade fireworks,
superstition and irrational fear. In his panorama of rural life in Bukhara of a century
ago, his parents and neighbors dig themselves out of a choking sandstorm, plan and
excavate a new canal, and are decimated by a cholera epidemic. The expected class lines of
Marxism are heretically blurred--noble peasants and artisans are offset by cruel and
greedy tradesmen, oppressive officials by cultured and generous aristocrats. Lenin is
never mentioned, but the Persian poet Sa`di is invoked at several junctures. Aini's mood
ranges from humor through satire to pathos, and his critical and didactic ends are served
more often in the narrative itself than in overt sermonizing.
An extensive introduction, notes, glossary and bibliography, as well as, two maps and 11
plates complete the work.
Specifications:
1998: ix+275pp., plates, maps, notes, appendix, glossary, bibliography.
Bibliotheca Iranica: Literature Series, No. 6
ISBN:1-56859-078-4 (paper): $24.95
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Comparative Literature
Conversation with Emperor Jahangir
Iranian Short Story Authors
Language and Culture in Persian
Once A Dewdrop
Patient Stone
Persian Literary Influence on English Literature
Reading Nast`liq
Sands of Oxus
Suppressed Persian
Tarikh-e Engelab
Welcoming Fighani
Yeghishe Charents
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