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The Railway

3.47 ( 156 Ratings by Goodreads)
The Railway

The Railway

(Author) (Author)
3.47 (156 Ratings by Goodreads)
paperback
Published: 2 March, 2006
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Description

'In the steppe near Tashkent, they came upon a never-ending ladder with wooden rungs and iron rails and that stretched across the earth from horizon to horizon...Whistling and thundering, a snake-like wonder hurtled past them, packed both on the inside and on top with infidels shouting and waving their hands. The End of the World! thought both Mahmud-Hodja the Sunni and Djebral the Shiite.' 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 is full of colour. Sophisticated, yet with a naive delight in storytelling, it chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century.
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More Details

Type Book
ISBN13 9781843431619
ISBN10 1843431610
Number Of Pages 320
Item Weight 339 g
Product Dimensions 134 x 28 x 214 mm
Publisher / Reseller Harvill Secker
Format paperback
Edition illustrated edition
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Media Reviews

Imagine Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude on the empty plains of central Asia . . . a bold and inventive, if damning, whirl through Central Asia's 20th-century history. -- Daily Telegraph
A work of rare beauty--an utterly readable, compelling book. -- New Statesman
All picaresque exuberance, a jumble of influences from Persian to Soviet and beyond. -- Sunday Herald
Robert Chandler's tenderly attentive rendering of The Railway perfectly captures the dreamy, circling music of Hamid Ismailov's prose. -- Daily Telegraph

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Author's Bio

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.

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