The Sin of Sholpan by Magzhan Zhumabaev

The Stories of Modern Kazakh Prose

Magzhan Zhumabaev is one of the fathers of modern Kazakh literature. Born in 1893 to a wealthy family in North Kazakhstan, he became one of the co-founders of the reformist political movement Alash Orda. Zhumabaev was a highly educated intellectual with wide-ranging interests who believed in the power of education: he spoke Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish and translated such prominent Western and Russian poets as Goethe and Lermontov into Kazakh. His first poetry collection, “Sholpan,” was written in Kazakh using Arabic script. Like many others, his life came to a premature end in 1938, in the midst of Stalin’s purges, but his wife preserved his writings for more than two decades in hopes that his name would be restored. Her hopes came to fruition: In 1960, Magzhan Zhumabaev was posthumously rehabilitated by a military tribunal. And with that, his poems returned to the people.

Today, we will talk about one of his short stories, The Sin of Sholpan, written in 1923. Though Zhumabaev mainly wrote poems, this story is a very significant part of his ouevre. It centers on a young girl named Sholpan who strives to be happy in her marriage but, overwhelmed by her own thoughts and expectations, ultimately fails to do so.