Have you ever tried to see stars in the clear sky in megacities at night? If you have, you know that the stars could not be seen due to the cities lights. Talking about fiction, I assume the use of that analogy. If all lights are on one writer's books, it is challenging to see another writer's great work. After Louis Aragon named "Jamila" the best love story and translated it into French, other Kyrgyz writers' love stories could not stand for competition. One of those invisible stars is the novelette "Munabya" by Kazat Akmatov.
The first publication of the work is in the weekly newspaper at the beginning of the 80s. The quiet short novel enters the literary scene of that time as the sensation. The protagonist is an older man who loves a younger woman, and the whole world is against their love. It was the first conflict of that kind in the history of Kyrgyz literature. There is no wonder that the novel receives fierce criticism and resistance from the conservative readership, as Soviet literary and political bureaucracies. "Munabiya" comes to the readers shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1986 as Best Book of the Year. The Hertforschire Press (United Kingdom) published a translation by Elizabeth Adams in 2013.
Reading the reviews of English-speaking readers about that Akmatov's novel, I notice at least one bias and one huge problem. On the one hand, the readers often simplify the multilayered content of work, assuming that the story is about social conflicts, gender problems, family feuds, et cetera... On the other hand, they exacerbate the reception difficulties caused by the solid ethnic settings, Kyrgyz cultural specifications.
"Munabiya" is the TRAGIC LOVE STORY about a man and a woman who lost the battle for just being able to be together in that world and win the possibility of holding hands after death in another universe.
I tear up when I just think about that book.