Book 4: The Railway by Hamid Ismailov
I’ve read The Railway in two different periods of my life — one when I was reading “world literature” for a year and this book was my pick for Uzbekistan, and second is this year when I was trying to take my literary reading seriously, or so I say. I had abandoned the book when I was reading the world, but it stayed with me for all these years; unable to get out of my mind.
Written in a magical realistic manner, I found this novel both exasperating and enjoyable. Exasperating because the storylines don’t neatly add up, and towards the end there’s too much sexual innuendo for my liking. However, this is not a book to be ignored as my own reading journey has lived to tell the tale. By some critics, this book is also called the 100 Years of Solitude of Central Asia and I may have to agree to a great extent. This is because I abandoned 100 Years of Solitude for the same reason as that of The Railway. We were reading the book as a buddy read in my book club, and I gave up. They say 100 Years of Solitude is a Spanish fever dream. Well, The Railway is an Uzbeki fever dream. I suppose this also means that, at some point, I will give 100 Years of Solitude another go.
There are many scenes in the book that I find hard to forget – be they about the ones in the chai khana, the incomprehensibility of the revolution, the women of the book who have their own idiosyncrasies and fantasies, and the men, who are, well, men and superstitious. The alternative storyline of the little boy is magical and could be its own story set aside separately.
Crooked clay walls, with yellow-eyed apricot trees looking over them; flowers covered in dust; dust covered in oblivion; now and again a veiled woman, or a man on a donkey-cart.
Hamid Ismailov. The Railway (p. 201). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Although this book took me a really long time to read, I am glad to have read it. I just wish it were shorter.
🌟 3.5/5
amarllyis 
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