Dancer from Khiva: One Muslim Woman's Quest for Freedom

An unflinchingly honest memoir, The Dancer from Khiva is a true story that offers remarkable insights into Central Asian culture through the harrowing experiences of a young girl.

In a narrative that flows like a late-night confession, Bibish recounts her story. Born to an impoverished family in a deeply religious village in Uzbekistan, Bibish was named “Hadjarbibi” in honor of her grandfather’s hadj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. But the holy name did not protect her from being gang-raped at the age of eight and left for dead in the desert. Bibish’s tenacity helped her survive, but in the coming years, that same tough-spiritedness caused her to be beaten, victimized, and ostracized from her family and community. Despite the seeming hopelessness of being a woman in such a cruelly patriarchal society, Bibish secretly cultivated her own dreams--of dancing, of raising a family, and of telling her story to the world.

The product of incredible resilience and spirit, The Dancer from Khiva is a harrowing, clear-eyed dispatch from a land where thousands of such stories have been silenced. It is a testament to Bibish’s fierce will and courage: the searing, fast-paced tale of a woman who risked everything.

An unflinchingly honest memoir, The Dancer from Khiva is a true story that offers remarkable insights into Central Asian culture through the harrowing experiences of a young girl.

In a narrative that flows like a late-night confession, Bibish recounts her story. Born to an impoverished family in a deeply religious village in Uzbekistan, Bibish was named “Hadjarbibi” in honor of her grandfather’s hadj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. But the holy name did not protect her from being gang-raped at the age of eight and left for dead in the desert. Bibish’s tenacity helped her survive, but in the coming years, that same tough-spiritedness caused her to be beaten, victimized, and ostracized from her family and community. Despite the seeming hopelessness of being a woman in such a cruelly patriarchal society, Bibish secretly cultivated her own dreams--of dancing, of raising a family, and of telling her story to the world.

The product of incredible resilience and spirit, The Dancer from Khiva is a harrowing, clear-eyed dispatch from a land where thousands of such stories have been silenced. It is a testament to Bibish’s fierce will and courage: the searing, fast-paced tale of a woman who risked everything.

Publishers Weekly

Published to critical acclaim in Russia, Bibish's memoir of raw hardship and desperate courage prompted one critic to declare that it put fiction to shame. Through plainspoken, episodic vignettes-lit with flashes of wry self-awareness-Bibish, a former Moscow street vendor, divulges epic tragedy without histrionics: a grisly upbringing of abject poverty in Muslim Uzbekistan, provincial repression and victimization that proves sorrowfully apt in steeling her for life's cruelties. Gang-raped and left for dead, she returns to her family looking "as ugly and dirty as the witch Baba-Yaga," dispelling her parents' worries with the lie that she'd been tending cows. She takes up dancing only to disgrace her village; and as a documented nonvirgin she's hard-pressed to find a husband. After fleeing to Leningrad, she returns to marry into a respectable family and eventually settles in Russia, which brings challenges both sober and silly. With innocent candor (she finds herself a "primitive savage" in the big city), Bibish effectively weaves into her understated narrative snippets of traditions and folk proverbs. (Aug.)