The Railway

"In the steppe near Tashkent they came upon a never-ending ladder with wooden rungs and iron rails 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 in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Their colorful lives offer a 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 world beyond. The Railway is a picaresque chronicle of the changes felt in Central Asia in the early twentieth...