The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years

As an avid reader of both classical and contemporary literature, I found this book you one of the great works of the 21st-century. It gives a feel for what it was like to live through The 1950s in Soviet Kazakhstan. It is both specific and universal. The traumatizing effects of WW ll have dislocated to traditional societies and scattered the people. It is the story of specific individuals trying to live with integrity in a difficult world.This theme, when written about with insight and sensitivity, is universally uplifting.

'In 1952 the summer was even hotter than usual. The ground dried out and became so hot that the Sarozek lizards did not know what to do; they lost their fear of people and were to be found sitting on the doorstep, their throats quivering, with mouths wide open, trying somehow to find shelter from the sun. Meanwhile, the kites were trying to get cool by soaring to such heights that you could no longer see them with the naked eye. Just now and again they gave themselves away with a single cry and then once more they became silent in the hot, quivering, mirage-laden air.'This novels tells the story of Yedigei, a worker at a remote railway junction in the middle of the Kazakh steppes. There's a refrain which is repeated at intervals throughout the book:'Trains in these parts went from East to West, and from West to East . . .On either side of the railway lines lay the great wide spaces of the desert -- Sary-Ozeki, the Middle lands of the yellow steppes.In these parts any distance was measured in relation to the railway, as if from the Greenwich meridian . . .And the trains went from East to West, and from West to East . . . 'Yedigei is taking the body of a friend to be buried at a traditional cemetery out in the steppes, and his life story is told in flashback. The railway junction is near a rocket launch site, and running in parallel to Yedigei's story is a strange subplot about cosmonauts making contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation.Aitmatov was from Kyrgyzstan; in some ways, though, it's very much a book of the Soviet Union. It was written in Russian and is set in Kazakhstan, and one of the themes in the book is the tension between the traditional Kazakh culture and the Soviet bureaucracy.Which isn't to say it's some kind of radically dissident novel; according to the introduction, Aitmatov (who died earlier this year) was a firmly establishment figure, a correspondent for Pravda, winner of a Lenin Prize and a State Prize for literature, and a winner of the Hero of Socialist Labour medal. The material which is most critical of the government is about things which happened under Stalin; presumably by 1980, when this novel was published, that was fair game.Incidentally, this English edition was published in 1983 and it's really strange to be reading all this stuff in the present tense. `He is a member of the Supreme Soviet, was a delegate to the last four Party Congresses...' I wouldn't say it makes me nostalgic exactly, but it is a bit of a throwback to my childhood.I really enjoyed this book; I think it's a genuine classic. The setting is striking and atmospheric; the steppes of central Asia, punishingly hot in summer and snow-covered in winter, inhabited by foxes and eagles and camels, with just this one railway line running through it. And the fairly conventional human drama which anchors the book is intertwined with the science fiction subplot on one hand and bits of Kazakh folk myth on the other.

I enjoyed reading this book. It's set on the Asian steppe but, since I've never been there, in my mind I imagined the story unfolding in the high deserts of Nevada by the Amtrak train that runs through Lovelock and Winnemucca. From this book I also learned about the Aral Sea, a place that until recently I'd never heard of. It's a slow, poetic, beautiful read.

i read this book long ago but it made such a profound impression on me that i look for it again and i am pleased to say that reading it again, it didn't disappoint me but only fascinate me again.It is written beautifully with much sensitivity for human nature and the landscape. i found it magical.

Really good story, of folk stories and the modern world, and the human potential and stupidity. It's story of a Kyrgyz railway worker and his life, you wouldn't think it was that much, but it really is pretty, global, in Soviet times and how things change. The intergalactic part wasn't the main story, but it all weaves together.