A Life Forbidden

About the Book

Reminiscent of Anna Karenina, the author provides a rare first-person glimpse into the heart of a young woman as she confronts chauvinism, ignorance, and other obstacles in her search for love and acceptance on the rugged steppe of Central Asia. Equally rugged stands the culture and landscape of Kazakhstan, a beautiful and fully developed character in its own right, which the heroine must contend with over the better part of a century.

About the Author

Beksultan Nurzhekeyev is a writer and laureate of an international award, Alash. He was born in 1941 in Almaty County (Oblast) in the region of Panfiloff. In 1965, he graduated from the language and literature department of S. M. Kirov Kazakh State University and worked as a teacher and later as a head teacher in a local school in Usharal in the Panfilovsky region. In 1969, he became the first secretary of the Komsomol Committee (Labour Party’s Youth) and was an apparatchik of the Orgcommittee of Komsomol of the Republic of Kazakhstan. He then became the chairman of a monthly periodical called Zhuldyz (star) and deputy chief editor of Zhalyn (flame). Later, he became its editor-in-chief before moving to the same position with the magazine Parasat (intellect) until 1992. Since 1992, he has been the director of the publishing house Zhalyn in Almaty. As a novelist, his publications include Love to Blame, Waiting for Eternity, One Regret, To Live by Hope, and Spouses. All his books laud the role of women who fought with men on an equal basis to build the egalitarian society that is being enjoyed today. His other novel When the Enemy Grabbed by Collar is based on documented historical events where the actions of the Red Army in Zharkent led to a massive migration of Kazakhs to China, followed by years of hunger and fear, again highlighting the qualities of Kazakh women in those desperate times. He openly described how the ‘Soviet Russian revolutionist Golovatskii deliberately starved nations in Central Asia in the 1930s’. His book was based on documentaries and other facts gathered during his research with lots of evidence that had been recorded in those years but was not well received in the upper reaches of the local communist party. Chingiz Khan Son and Warrior of Kazakh Steppes, his latest work on the birthplace of Ghengis Khan is the culmination of many years of studying archives and official records and emanates from pride in the history of Kazakhstan and its people.