The Railway
  • Published: 15 July 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099466130
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

The Railway

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A vibrant, multi-cultural and surreal satire set in Uzbekistan in the mid-twentieth century.

Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town's alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; and Umarali-Moneybags, the old moneylender. Their colourful lives offer a unique and comic picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming Bolsheviks, and a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans, Tatars and Gypsies.

At the heart of both the town and the novel stands the railway station - a source of income and influence, and a connection to the greater world beyond the town. Rich and picaresque, The Railway chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century.
  • Published: 15 July 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099466130
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

About the author

Hamid Ismailov

HAMID ISMAILOV, regarded as a man of 'unacceptably democratic tendencies' in Uzbekistan, was forced to flee his homeland, and so came to London in 1992. He was recruited by the BBC World Service to set up its Central Asia Service. He has published many books both in Russia and in Uzbekistan, but this is the first time his work has been translated into English.

Praise for The Railway

All picaresque exuberance, a jumble of influences from Persian to Soviet and beyond

Catherine Lockerbie, Sunday Herald

A wonderfully engaging novel

Melissa McClements, Financial Times

Robert Chandler's tenderly attentive rendering of The Railway perfectly captures the dreamy, circling music of Hamid Ismailov's prose

Chandrahas Choudhury, Daily Telegraph

Imagine Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude on the empty plains of central Asia...The Railway is a bold and inventive, if damning, whirl through Central Asia's 20th-century history

Charlotte Hobson, Daily Telegraph

It is a work of rare beauty - an utterly readable, compelling book

Craig Murray, New Statesman

A poet's novel, full of memorable descriptive passages and heart-wrenching asides

Independent

Strange and beautiful

The Times