In 1840s Turkistan, two decades before Russian conquest, a thoughtful young reformer named Otabek pursues love amid a society already fraying. Set against real khans and real political upheaval, this founding Uzbek novel pairs romance with a clear-eyed portrait of a world on the edge of change.
A society's moral and spiritual decline from within is set beside the cultural damage that foreign colonisers later do. The story takes place about twenty years before a conquest, in a region already falling apart, as if the weakness at home came before the defeat from outside.
The person who wants to modernise a society often ends up feeling like a stranger in it. The hero of this novel is a forward-looking trader and reformer who spends much of his time lost in thought and feels he does not belong.