Aitmatov, Chingiz and Mukhamedzhanov, Kaltai

New York. 1975. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket . 0374106290. A Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Russian by Nicholas Bethell. 211 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Antonio Frasconi. keywords: Literature Translated Russia Drama. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In the winter of of 1973 an extraordinarily provocative play was presented on the Moscow stage. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT FUJI jolted Russian audiences with its frank discussion of moral compromises made by individuals in the past. The play's exploration of human ethics reaches beyond the scope of the recent Soviet experience to all people, regardless of nationality and history. Four former schoolmates, three of their wives, and their favorite old schoolteacher gather for a reunion on a mountain in Kirghizia. The four had grown up and gone to war together, but had rarely made contact in the past twenty years. They are now all respectable members of Soviet society: a schoolteacher, an agronomist on a state farm, an international journalist, and a director of a history institute. It soon becomes apparent that there is a missing fifth member of the: Sabur, a poet, who refused to come to the reunion because he had been denounced by one of these friends during the war. Even now, after so many years, none of them will admit responsibility for Sabur's fate. It is at this point that the significance of the play's title is explained by one of the characters: an old Japanese legend says that one must climb to the top of Mount Fuji and there justify the actions of one's entire life before God. And so, on a remote mountain, the old friends attempt to understand and confront the truths of their past and, in a surprising ending, find themselves faced with moral problems in their present life as well. inventory #853 ISBN: 0374106290.