This review first appeared on the Magic Realism Books blog - http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.comHave I told you that I have developed a liking for Russian magic realism? Yes, I think I have. And now I can add that I also enjoy magic realism from Uzbekistan, the now independent state which was part of the former Soviet Union. Hamid Ismailov is clearly in the tradition of Russian satirical magic realism that I admire so much in Bulgakov and Gogol, but this is combined with the traditions of Muslim Central Asia, which remind me of the magic realism of Salman Rushdie for want of better comparators. The result is fascinating and intoxicating.If you are looking for a simple narrative and a conventional story structure then this is not the book for you. For starters the central character is the town of Gilas, rather as Macondo is a major character in One Hundred Years of Solitude. But unlike in Marquez's classic, we do not follow one family, but dozens of townsfolk over several generations - the author very helpfully provides a list. What is more the book references Uzbek historic events and customs - and again the writer provides footnotes. Add the fact that the book jumps around cchronologically and you can see why this is not an easy read.So how did I approach reading The Railway? I could, I suppose, have been studious about it - referring to the dramatis personae and footnotes as I read. I could have, but I didn't. Even though I review all the magic realist books I read, I do not approach them in a methodical way. Instead I tend to be more impressionistic in my approach. My love of magic realism is partly because it speaks to the subconscious, and deals in visions and the poetic. To experience these it is best that I do not analyse too intellectually, at least not while I am reading. This then was my approach to the book and it paid off. It was an approach that I used when first I watched Tarkovsky's film Stalker. I was reminded of that film as I read this book. I am left with some crystal-clear images, so clear that they could be scenes in a film. There is the image of the boy angry and alone beside the railway, looking up and, seeing a girl on a passing train, blowing her a kiss. There is the image of the railway itself against the vast steppe - a ladder from earth to the sky. There are images galore. There is some sublime poetry in The Railway. I say sublime because the book has a strong strand of Islamic mysticism. Obid-Kori meditates in prison: Words can turn out other ways, words can be replayed and replied, relayed and re-lied., rehearsed and re-versed... but life is one, and life is from Allah. And what do we know of it? It cannot be sensed or weighed between words any more than the rays of the sun can be sensed between leaves... leaves... leaves... And only the leaves' shadow catches the little patches of light, surrounds, frames, defines, confines. As he gazes through the iron grating at the sky we are told that the grating was formed by two verticals and six rusty crossbars. It mirrors, although the writer does not say so directly, the form of the railway ascending to heaven. But if this book reminds me of Stalker it also reminds me of Master and Margarita. Ismailov's satire is brilliant, laughing at Russian attempts to homogenize the local inhabitants. They in turn take the communist slogans (written in a tongue they do not comprehend) to be magical charms to ward off harm. We laugh at the absurd language of the oppressor, e.g. circumcision is made the crime of "sabotage of the member". The way the narrative moves from one time to another allows us to see repetitions and variations. Throughout the book characters are shipped off to the gulags and some return. Others, like the Koreans, are deported to Gilas. The threat of imprisonment, deportation and death is present, regardess of whether it is the Tsar in Moscow, or Lenin or Stalin. Life goes on for Gilas, the book's central character. New people take the posts vacated by the disgraced. The people of Gilas continue on their own sweet way: drinking, pursuing their own advancement, and even making money as the entrepreneurial spirit of the people of the Silk Road turns even communism to their advantage. This is a book I want to read again. It certainly merits it and probably needs it. If you like One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Master and Margarita you will probably like this. I received this book from the publisher via Edelweiss free in return for a fair review.
Some aspects of this book I liked, but it was very scattered, jumping around in time and from character to character, which made it extremely difficult to follow. It doesn't really have a plot. Since I knew nothing about Central Asia I did learn a lot from it. I was surprised at the wild mix of cultures and languages, the huge migrations due to exile, war, political upheavals. The book is funny in a farsical, satirical way. The crazy changes that the Russians imposed are so sad they are funny. Like changing the alphabet that Uzbek is written in 3 times, and 3 different calendar systems. My favorite part was how people learned to say political slogans in Russian as magical chants which could get them into high positions, but then would suddenly get them sent to prison or the front when the political winds changed. I couldn't have managed without the translator's help: several pages of names of the characters and how they are related, a family tree, map of Central Asia, and 159 footnotes. Otherwise I wouldn't have understood any of it.
Do You like book The Railway (2008)?
Yes, it's extremely postcolonial magical-realist, which means you can expect tears to destroy cinema carpets, people to be able to remove shadows, enormous penises to bring down a fence, and similar things, while the characters invoke Communist leaders and Allah. Everyone's fighting for their own personal interest, absolutely willing to have their adversaries, whether politicians, musicians, or bazaar sellers, sent to Gulag. Almost everybody at some point in this book gets sent to a labor camp. Yet somehow many parts of The Railway made me laugh out loud.
—Baklavahalva
Having set myself the modest enough goal for 2010 of reading a few more books for the Read The World challenge than I did in 2009… I’m already behind schedule. We’re into March and I’ve only just finished my first. Ho-hum.The Railway (translated by Robert Chandler) is my book from Uzbekistan. I was slightly peeved when I received the book to read in the author bio that Hamid Ismailov was actually born in Kirghizstan, but his Uzbek credentials appear to be otherwise impeccable. His parents were just working in Kirghizstan when he was born, at a time of course when both countries were part of the USSR anyway. In some ways it’s quite fitting for this novel, because it is a book full of a patchwork of different nationalities and ethnicities, and full of people moving from place to place, for traditional reasons like pilgrimage and trade; or as part of the army or civil service; or sent to labour camps; or forcibly relocated en masse by the government, like the ethnic Koreans from the far east of the USSR who were moved to Central Asia for some paranoid reason that presumably made sense to Stalin.One of the reviews quoted on the cover says ‘imagine Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude on the empty plains of Central Asia’, and although it’s perhaps not quite so overtly magical as 100YoS, it is certainly of that ilk, full of strange happenings and grotesquerie. It also has many many characters, all with long Uzbek names — there’s an eight-page list at the back to help you keep track of them, although I can’t say it helped me much — and it shifts around in time and place in a way which, to be honest, just meant I was usually a bit confused. It almost would have been better if I’d read it as a book of short stories, I think, because it would have saved me that sense of being permanently unsure what was going on. I have a relatively high tolerance for non-linear narratives and that sort of thing, but I found it hard going. I didn’t help myself by the way I read it; rather too many long gaps between picking it up.On the positive side, the world it conjures up is an interesting one: a traditional Central Asian culture rubbing up against Russia and the Soviet bureaucracy, an Islamic culture in a sometimes aggressively secular state, petty local politics in the middle of it. It was one of those books where I kind of thought that maybe, if I had read it in a different place or a different mood I might have really enjoyed it, because it certainly had interesting stuff going on and I can’t put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy it… but there you go.
—Harry Rutherford
