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50books_pocThe Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years - Chingiz Aitmatov
This book follows one day in life of Burannyi Yedigei, an aging Kazakh worker living at a remote railway station in the Sary-Ozek steppes, as he travels to an ancient graveyard in order to bury his friend Kazangap in the traditional ways. Along the way he reflects on his long and difficult life, the lives of the other people he has known, his land, the folk stories of his people, and the cosmonauts taking off from the cosmodrome.
It very much a book about how the Soviet Union's drive towards a socialist utopia, to exclusion of all else, leaves entire cultures in its wake. It's a funeral song not only to one man, but an entire way of life. Burannyi Yedigei is continually frustrated by people's apathy towards aspects of their culture which are becoming more difficult to adhere to in a Russian-dominated age (such as burying Kazangap in the traditional ways, which he can hardly talk anyone into helping with, and speaking the Kyrgyz language as opposed to Russian).
The book's sharply critical theme is underlined in the book's one science fiction element:
Representatives from the US and the USSR make contact with an alien race living in a utopian culture, who offer to instruct mankind on how to achieve this on Earth. The USSR decides that an utopia not achieved by socialism is not in keeping with their Communist goals and that the aliens are not welcome on their planet, nor are the astronauts welcome to come back. and in the climax, in which a Kazakh mired in Soviet bureaucracy informs them that the cemetery is condemned and will be leveled soon for new development, and under no circumstances is he to allow unauthorized persons inside. The men are turned away and bury Kazangap in a nearby ravine. Yedigei, understanding that he is now the oldest and therefore the one most likely to die next, asks that the men please bury him by Kazangap's side.
It's the very definition of beautiful and epic. It's also so detailed and personal and tender. There's just so much here, and every tiny element of the story gets full sympathy and loving attention, from a vixen searching the desert for food, to the camel Karanar, to Kazangap's daughter's marriage problems and Yedigei's wistful, passing desire for a young widow.
It's a vast, mythical, metaphorical story - Wikipedia describes it as "His work drew on folklore, not in the ancient sense of it; rather, he tried to recreate and synthesize oral tales in the context of contemporary life." - but the characters seem to be deliberately the opposite. They come off as grains of sand, living quietly with their hope and their love and the constant understanding that they are going to decay and die, that they will be battered about by forces they have no control over - time, age, harsh conditions, poverty, power - and that's what makes the book so melancholic. His book draws upon the symbolic relevance of a folktale about a captive turned into a mankurt (a slave who was broken by torture into forgetting his past and name, and unable to do anything but obey and perform basic functions). His characters seem like captives of the entire world.
The author, Chingiz Aitmatov, passed away recently, only just last year. He was not Kazakh but Kyrgyz. However, he lived near the Kazakh border and belonged to a related culture.
This book follows one day in life of Burannyi Yedigei, an aging Kazakh worker living at a remote railway station in the Sary-Ozek steppes, as he travels to an ancient graveyard in order to bury his friend Kazangap in the traditional ways. Along the way he reflects on his long and difficult life, the lives of the other people he has known, his land, the folk stories of his people, and the cosmonauts taking off from the cosmodrome.
It very much a book about how the Soviet Union's drive towards a socialist utopia, to exclusion of all else, leaves entire cultures in its wake. It's a funeral song not only to one man, but an entire way of life. Burannyi Yedigei is continually frustrated by people's apathy towards aspects of their culture which are becoming more difficult to adhere to in a Russian-dominated age (such as burying Kazangap in the traditional ways, which he can hardly talk anyone into helping with, and speaking the Kyrgyz language as opposed to Russian).
The book's sharply critical theme is underlined in the book's one science fiction element:
Representatives from the US and the USSR make contact with an alien race living in a utopian culture, who offer to instruct mankind on how to achieve this on Earth. The USSR decides that an utopia not achieved by socialism is not in keeping with their Communist goals and that the aliens are not welcome on their planet, nor are the astronauts welcome to come back. and in the climax, in which a Kazakh mired in Soviet bureaucracy informs them that the cemetery is condemned and will be leveled soon for new development, and under no circumstances is he to allow unauthorized persons inside. The men are turned away and bury Kazangap in a nearby ravine. Yedigei, understanding that he is now the oldest and therefore the one most likely to die next, asks that the men please bury him by Kazangap's side.
It's the very definition of beautiful and epic. It's also so detailed and personal and tender. There's just so much here, and every tiny element of the story gets full sympathy and loving attention, from a vixen searching the desert for food, to the camel Karanar, to Kazangap's daughter's marriage problems and Yedigei's wistful, passing desire for a young widow.
It's a vast, mythical, metaphorical story - Wikipedia describes it as "His work drew on folklore, not in the ancient sense of it; rather, he tried to recreate and synthesize oral tales in the context of contemporary life." - but the characters seem to be deliberately the opposite. They come off as grains of sand, living quietly with their hope and their love and the constant understanding that they are going to decay and die, that they will be battered about by forces they have no control over - time, age, harsh conditions, poverty, power - and that's what makes the book so melancholic. His book draws upon the symbolic relevance of a folktale about a captive turned into a mankurt (a slave who was broken by torture into forgetting his past and name, and unable to do anything but obey and perform basic functions). His characters seem like captives of the entire world.
The author, Chingiz Aitmatov, passed away recently, only just last year. He was not Kazakh but Kyrgyz. However, he lived near the Kazakh border and belonged to a related culture.
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