Books from Tajikistan

Taste of Sarband gathers recipes and oral histories from Tajikistan, drawing on conversations with over fifty people ranging in age from 18 to 108. Most of the contributors come from the Khatlon region in the southern part of the country. The book covers breads, breakfast dishes, side dishes, main meals, drinks, and desserts, alongside sections on key ingredients, seasoning foundations, and cooking techniques specific to Tajik kitchens.

Beyond the recipes, the book includes background on Tajikistan's history and explanations of what a traditional holiday table looks like, with its particular arrangement of dishes and customs. Ellen A. Abdulmuminov frames food as a carrier of personal memory and cultural meaning, collecting anecdotes and reflections from her sources about what cooking and eating represent in their daily and ceremonial lives. Photographs accompany the descriptions throughout.

The age range of contributors is notable. An 18-year-old and a 108-year-old describe the same dishes from very different positions in time, and the book records both perspectives. This span gives the collection a documentary quality, preserving kitchen knowledge that might otherwise pass without being written down.

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The City Where Dreams Come True is a collection of four interconnected stories by Gulsifat Shahidi, set against the backdrop of Tajikistan's civil war in the early 1990s. The conflict, which followed the country's independence from the Soviet Union, caused tens of thousands of deaths and displaced many more. Shahidi, who worked as a journalist during this period, draws partly on her own experiences to shape the narratives.

The stories are told through four narrators spread across three generations of the same family: Horosho, his granddaughter Nekbaht, her husband Ali, and Ali's cousin Shernazar. Each voice carries a distinct perspective on what the war cost ordinary people, from personal loss and displacement to encounters with violence and injustice. Despite these pressures, the characters share a persistent drive to survive and to rebuild some version of normal life for themselves and those around them.

Shahidi's writing reflects both a close familiarity with Tajik culture and a concern for what becomes of a society after prolonged internal conflict. The four narratives are interwoven rather than separated, linking individual fates to broader questions about recovery, opportunity, and what people choose to hold onto when stability disappears.

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Sadriddin Aini is widely regarded as a founding figure of modern Tajik literature. The Sands of Oxus presents the first volume of his unfinished Reminiscences, a memoir written in the first person that looks back on his childhood in pre-revolutionary Uzbekistan. The account describes a traditional Iranian-Islamic society at a moment of approaching change, seen through the eyes of a bright, observant boy growing up within its customs and contradictions.

Alongside the memoir, the book includes two autobiographical novellas. The Village School follows Sadriddin through the disorder of his early education, while Ahmad the Exorcist recounts his encounters with superstition and irrational fear. Both stories carry a tone of personal detail, depicting fireworks made by hand, the chaos of a schoolroom, and the weight that folk belief placed on daily life. Together, the novellas fill out the picture of a childhood shaped by forces the young Sadriddin was only beginning to understand.

The Oxus River of the title, known today as the Amu Darya, runs through Central Asia and has long served as a geographic and cultural boundary in the region. Aini's memoir is rooted in that landscape and in the specific social world it sustained before the upheavals of the twentieth century.

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