Guzel Yakhina was born and raised in Kazan, graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, and studies at the screenwriting faculty of the Moscow Film School. She has been published in the journals “Neva,” “Siberian Lights,” and “October.” The novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” begins in winter 1930 in a remote Tatar village. Zuleikha, a peasant woman, along with hundreds of other settlers, is sent in a cattle car to Siberia along the age-old convict route. Deep in the countryside, the rough peasants, and the Leningrad intelligentsia—declassed elements and criminals, Muslims and Christians, pagans and atheists, Russians, Tatars, Germans, and Chuvash—everyone will meet on the banks of the Angara, daily fighting the taiga and the ruthless state for the right to live. Everyone who was dispossessed and resettled is addressed here.