Volume 630 pages
2003 year
Everything Begins In Childhood
About the book
Author vividly recounts his early years as a Jewish boy growing up among his many relatives in Soviet Uzbekistan in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Each chapter carries us back to that childhood world, full of discoveries and events. The book allows us to feel the atmosphere in which the little Bucharan Jewish boy lived, first in the large Uzbek city of Tashkent and later in industrial, multiethnic Chirchik. Valery Yuabov’s book has drawn attention and received high praise. “… it grips the reader from the first pages. The impressions of his childhood are bright and three-dimensional…
The book urges us to think about life. It allows us to imagine that terrible time when the ruling Communist ideology perverted the fates of millions of people…” That’s how the historian Dr. David Ochildeyev, an honored scholar of Uzbekistan, wrote about V. Yuabov’s book Everything Begins in Childhood.
As editor for the English translation of this book, I was able to read it before other non-Russian speakers. Every week, I looked forward to receiving the text of the new adventures of little Valya and was sorry to see the book came to an end. The most amazing feat of Valery Yuabov, in my opinion, is his ability to remember so vividly not only his childhood adventures and the life of his Jewish family in Soviet Uzbekistan but also the intricate mosaic of sights, smells and sounds. The book will bring back memories for those who lived in the Soviet Union or have been in Central Asia, but the insightful descriptions of the characters and the details of everyday life really help recreate that world for those of us who read it as outsiders and must imagine the events and setting.
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