Chingiz Aitmatov

This collection of three Aitmatov short stories basically was dedicated to James Riordan, the British academic and the best translator of Aitmatov into English. It contains his translation of the 1960 short story 'Camel Eye' as well as Rahima Abduvalieva's translations of 'The Boy Soldier' and 'The Monkey Girl and the Satchel'. The latter was originally written in German as a fairy tale for Aitmatov's children.

Set in the vast windswept Central Asian steppes and the infinite reaches of galactic space, this powerful novel offers a vivid view of the culture and values of the Soviet Union's Central Asian peoples.

Aitmatov is an enigma. For a start he is not Russian, but Kirgiz. Yet he has gained distinction through the medium of Russian. He writes not one but two versions of each work: first in Kirgiz, then in Russian, sometimes under a different title and in a different version, in the manner of Conrad, Nabokov and Narayan. He is at once both liberal and conservative; he has been embraced by the Soviet establishment from Khrushchov to Brezhnev, Andropov to...