The Railway

by Hamid Ismailov, Robert Chandler

"It is a work of rare beauty—an utterly readable, compelling book." —Craig Murray, New Statesman

"All picaresque exuberance, a jumble of influences from Persian to Soviet and beyond." —Catherine Lockerbie, Sunday Herald

“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 colorful 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 color. Sophisticated yet with a naive delight in storytelling, it chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Asia, Historical, The World, Literary Fiction, Novels

336 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2006

Reviews

[Harry Rutherford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having set myself the modest enough goal for 2010 of reading a few more books for the Read The World challenge than I did in 2009… I’m already behind schedule. We’re into March and I’ve only just finished my first. Ho-hum.

The Railway (translated by Robert Chandler) is my book from Uzbekistan. I was slightly peeved when I received the book to read in the author bio that Hamid Ismailov was actually born in Kirghizstan, but his Uzbek credentials appear to be otherwise impeccable. His parents were just working in Kirghizstan when he was born, at a time of course when both countries were part of the USSR anyway. In some ways it’s quite fitting for this novel, because it is a book full of a patchwork of different nationalities and ethnicities, and full of people moving from place to place, for traditional reasons like pilgrimage and trade; or as part of the army or civil service; or sent to labour camps; or forcibly relocated en masse by the government, like the ethnic Koreans from the far east of the USSR who were moved to Central Asia for some paranoid reason that presumably made sense to Stalin.

One of the reviews quoted on the cover says ‘imagine Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude on the empty plains of Central Asia’, and although it’s perhaps not quite so overtly magical as 100YoS, it is certainly of that ilk, full of strange happenings and grotesquerie. It also has many many characters, all with long Uzbek names — there’s an eight-page list at the back to help you keep track of them, although I can’t say it helped me much — and it shifts around in time and place in a way which, to be honest, just meant I was usually a bit confused. It almost would have been better if I’d read it as a book of short stories, I think, because it would have saved me that sense of being permanently unsure what was going on. I have a relatively high tolerance for non-linear narratives and that sort of thing, but I found it hard going. I didn’t help myself by the way I read it; rather too many long gaps between picking it up.

On the positive side, the world it conjures up is an interesting one: a traditional Central Asian culture rubbing up against Russia and the Soviet bureaucracy, an Islamic culture in a sometimes aggressively secular state, petty local politics in the middle of it. It was one of those books where I kind of thought that maybe, if I had read it in a different place or a different mood I might have really enjoyed it, because it certainly had interesting stuff going on and I can’t put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy it… but there you go.

[Val · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Railway" is both a confusing and a delightful book. There are a lot of characters from a lot of different ethnic groups; it spans several years in a non-chronological way; it has the odd history lesson or maybe just a legend thrown in from time to time; it has mystical meditations on the meaning of life and God (Allah) and man, which are very seriously meant, and some communist tenets which are probably not; it has a few trains. The various characters may leave and then may or may not come back, other characters may arrive, usually by train. Other characters spend most of their time drinking either tea or vodka. Most of them are resigned to their fate, however sad and unfortunate, and some who are not find changing their circumstances somewhat futile, but it not a depressing book at all.
I did not understand everything of what was going on, but I did enjoy it a lot, although somewhat in the manner of watching a visually very funny film, in a language I cannot understand and without sub-titles. I may not know a lot more about Uzbekistan after reading this book, but I have some wonderful images of it.
This book quite possibly deserves five stars and I just didn't appreciate it sufficiently to be amazed, but I was impressed by both the book and the translation. There are wonderful nicknames and wordplay, which are so great it is difficult to believe this is a translation.

Edit: Translation 5*, Writing 5*, Understanding by reader not 5*.
I am penalising the book because I'm being thick, which is unfair.
Rating changed to five stars.

[Rusalka · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I had to choose a two word phrase to sum up this book it would be "Semen Sprinkler".

I hated this book. I do not know if I wasn't clever enough for it. Maybe I wasn't able to suspend disbelief enough. Maybe I have less tolerance than others for shit, semen, child rape, or rape than others.

Magical realism is a thing which I appreciate and get and realise it will be hit and miss. That wasn't my problem with the book although I realised early on this was not going to be a book I enjoyed. The book is non-linear, looking at all the weird and wonderful creatures/people that live in this town over a century. Lives and stories tangle. That all makes sense.

But there was an off vibe from the beginning of the book that solidifies as the book goes on. And that I have no time for. I feel ikky from reading it. I don't really find shit or semen jokes funny. And I don't know if they are jokes or not in this book. But the amount of people that turned into a fricking semen sprinkler system in this book was ridiculous. Could have put a timer system on them and saved the world from drought. And I didn't understand why! All of the sudden these men would turn into a torrent of semen.

Less emotional and back to the world of practicality - the footnotes are at the end of the book. And they are numerous, and exhausting, and when you do not give a shit about what you are reading and have to flick 200 pages to find the footnote, you get annoyed. And then the footnotes reference the footnotes. Just fuck off at that stage, honestly.

Lexx asked if I was going to write an amusing review of this book, and I just can't. I feel sick I have read it. It was a bloody slog and I gained very little from the process besides mental images I will be trying to expunge from my brain forevermore. Just... don't.

[Zoe Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review first appeared on the Magic Realism Books blog - http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.com

Have I told you that I have developed a liking for Russian magic realism? Yes, I think I have. And now I can add that I also enjoy magic realism from Uzbekistan, the now independent state which was part of the former Soviet Union. Hamid Ismailov is clearly in the tradition of Russian satirical magic realism that I admire so much in Bulgakov and Gogol, but this is combined with the traditions of Muslim Central Asia, which remind me of the magic realism of Salman Rushdie for want of better comparators. The result is fascinating and intoxicating.

If you are looking for a simple narrative and a conventional story structure then this is not the book for you. For starters the central character is the town of Gilas, rather as Macondo is a major character in One Hundred Years of Solitude. But unlike in Marquez's classic, we do not follow one family, but dozens of townsfolk over several generations - the author very helpfully provides a list. What is more the book references Uzbek historic events and customs - and again the writer provides footnotes. Add the fact that the book jumps around cchronologically and you can see why this is not an easy read.

So how did I approach reading The Railway? I could, I suppose, have been studious about it - referring to the dramatis personae and footnotes as I read. I could have, but I didn't. Even though I review all the magic realist books I read, I do not approach them in a methodical way. Instead I tend to be more impressionistic in my approach. My love of magic realism is partly because it speaks to the subconscious, and deals in visions and the poetic. To experience these it is best that I do not analyse too intellectually, at least not while I am reading. This then was my approach to the book and it paid off.

It was an approach that I used when first I watched Tarkovsky's film Stalker. I was reminded of that film as I read this book. I am left with some crystal-clear images, so clear that they could be scenes in a film. There is the image of the boy angry and alone beside the railway, looking up and, seeing a girl on a passing train, blowing her a kiss. There is the image of the railway itself against the vast steppe - a ladder from earth to the sky. There are images galore. There is some sublime poetry in The Railway. I say sublime because the book has a strong strand of Islamic mysticism. Obid-Kori meditates in prison: Words can turn out other ways, words can be replayed and replied, relayed and re-lied., rehearsed and re-versed... but life is one, and life is from Allah. And what do we know of it? It cannot be sensed or weighed between words any more than the rays of the sun can be sensed between leaves... leaves... leaves... And only the leaves' shadow catches the little patches of light, surrounds, frames, defines, confines. As he gazes through the iron grating at the sky we are told that the grating was formed by two verticals and six rusty crossbars. It mirrors, although the writer does not say so directly, the form of the railway ascending to heaven.

But if this book reminds me of Stalker it also reminds me of Master and Margarita. Ismailov's satire is brilliant, laughing at Russian attempts to homogenize the local inhabitants. They in turn take the communist slogans (written in a tongue they do not comprehend) to be magical charms to ward off harm. We laugh at the absurd language of the oppressor, e.g. circumcision is made the crime of "sabotage of the member".

The way the narrative moves from one time to another allows us to see repetitions and variations. Throughout the book characters are shipped off to the gulags and some return. Others, like the Koreans, are deported to Gilas. The threat of imprisonment, deportation and death is present, regardess of whether it is the Tsar in Moscow, or Lenin or Stalin. Life goes on for Gilas, the book's central character. New people take the posts vacated by the disgraced. The people of Gilas continue on their own sweet way: drinking, pursuing their own advancement, and even making money as the entrepreneurial spirit of the people of the Silk Road turns even communism to their advantage.

This is a book I want to read again. It certainly merits it and probably needs it. If you like One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Master and Margarita you will probably like this.

I received this book from the publisher via Edelweiss free in return for a fair review.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Around the Word Reading Challenge: UZBEKISTAN
===
This book follows that many, many lives and stories of the people who live in a small town with a railway running through it in Uzbekistan. The concept had promise, and you do get a feeling for the country, but there were SO many characters, it was impossible to keep track. I felt quite lost and confused for most of the book, because I just couldn't keep everybody and their various relationships in my head.

[BuzzBuzz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounded up to 4 stars. There's a lot to like and a lot to labouriously chew and ultimately give up on digesting. People without some connection or experience of ex-Soviet countries will have a hard time reading this. The final interview between author and translator will shed a lot of light on why the book is the way that it is: "The ideal novel for me at that time was a novel that was free, a novel that could be understood only by myself and that was therefore not serving anyone."

Also, why do men authors so often feel the need to inject the ludicrous concept of casual sexual violence sprouting from random, circumstantial, unarrestable needs for release? I don't care that your characters are uneducated, simple, rural, or whatever, it's uninspired and tiresome to make them engage in casual sexual assault and I don't understand why other men judge it a bold or in any way beneficial choice in manuscripts if it doesn't serve the plot in any way (which it most often doesn't). But this is a product of the 80s/90s, so I guess it is not that surprising. I didn't detract any starts for it.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

An argument against reading novels like this on Kindle, where it is such a trial to flick backwards and forwards across the pages to fix the characters in mind. But having read it this way I'd say it is good enough to get the paperback edition so I can do it all over again.

Ismailov tangles tangles with the difficult legacy of the Bolshevik revolution for the peoples of Uzbekistan - more particularly, the residents of the one small town of Gilas. A dogmatic theory of change and progress gets overwritten on a community made up of numerous, diverse, groups - from the Uzbeks and other central Asian people (Kazakh, Tadjik, Azari, Persian, etc) as well as Orthodox Russian Christians and Bukhari Jews. The Party provides a new structure through which old relations have to be worked out, with the ideology of the new state falling very early at the wayside. What comes into play is a changed society, but one where all the old personalities of tribe and community continue to rule the roost.

All of this generates scores of stories which stretch out over years, with constant reference to characters who occupy different positions at all the various stages. An interview with the author puts the book in a tradition of Soviet novel in which the name Andrey Platonov is prominent. It is a lot less gloomy than that author's 'Foundation Pit' or 'Happy Moscow' - in fact there's a fair bit of humour in the stories. In the end the sense is that the Soviet experiment left little impact on the lives of the people of Gilas, with the currents of Uzbek and the other communities' lives remaining in courses fixed centuries ago.

[Rebecca Meyrink · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was too ambitious. This is about a town of people in Uzbekistan that has a railway and it’s centre. The story jumps from character to character who’s loves all intersect.

The book does give you a list of characters but the list is 130 characters long which is overwhelming for a book with 330 pages. I felt like the book was trying to tell the story of everyone in the town and on top of that there were many footnotes of real life history.

I love stories that feature a large cast of intersecting stories but this book got lost in the details and didn’t have an overarching plot to pull it all together. Part way through the book I gave up flipping to the character list section and decided to give up on trying to figure out how the characters lives intersected with others.

There were some nice moments in the first third of the book and even though I couldn’t figure out how any character connected with any other character I was still enjoying the story but as the narrative moves on it becomes increasingly violent and I couldn’t find the reason these scenes were included.

[Matilda H · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the role the railway played in this book, and it was a delight to read references to Bukhara and other locations I visited in Uzbekistan, just days after I was there. From a literary perspective, this book was not my cup of tea, though.

I became wary when I saw the list of characters that contained more than a hundred names, and before page 50, I had given up any attempt to understand who was who. As the book progressed, I also gave up trying to figure out what was really happening and what was simply dreams or fantasies. The novel was quite nasty as well at times. While it was fun to read something from Uzbekistan for the first time, I am sure there are better options to go for.

[1.5 ☆]

[Sirin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one started out confusing (mostly because of the vast number of characters and the seemingly unrelated stories), but grew on me. It is probably harder to follow if you know less about Muslim cultures and Russian / Soviet culture, yet its a delightful(ly weird) book.

[Dorota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imaginative and ambitious book, telling through often humourous vignettes a recent history of Central Asia, showing its immense ethnic and cultural diversity and the impact of soviet russia's colonisation. However, due to a number of characters, not an easy read (even with the list of characters).

[Serena]

This feels simultaneously like part of a canon, but also very worthy of celebration for itself. The tapestry/vignette style (somewhat reminding me of Celestial Bodies or And the Wind Sees All) plus a good dose of significant history told in a satirical tone (somewhat reminding me of Midnight's Children) fulfilling the first part, while the book also clearly has elements of its own style; the railway metaphor, the extreme diversity of people in the story, and I did think the irony was on a whole other level of its own. Robert Chandler's introduction deserves a shout-out of its own, on top of the brilliant translation that shows his own empathy, humour and skill in translating such a powerful piece. And the volume of footnotes is very noticeable, as is the value they add - especially when they have a whole range of facts from the history of the Crimean Tatars, to the fact that Uzbeks look on bread as sacred. The man who went blind after kicking a flatbread is going on my all-time favourite gems list.

This review by the Independent is great, as are all of the recommendations to look at Hamid Ismailov's BBC World Service content.

Plus, the conversation at the end of the edition I read is pure gold:
"H: The Railway is not simply an Uzbek novel - it could just as well be a Soviet novel.
R: A Soviet novel or a Sufi novel?
H: It's both. You could say it's about what the Soviet railway has done to the Sufi soul."

[Rune Clausen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I barely know where to begin with this one. What a journey. And not, unfortunately, a exclusively positive one.

The cover of the book touts a review saying "Imagine One Hundred Years of Solitude set on the empty plains of Central Asia". This was actually a citing that made me very exciting, but it took the worst parts of 100 YoS but not a lot of the good ones. The story is seemingly an incoherent set of events and happenings following a extremely expansive gallery of characters (there's a 8 page character-list at the back of the book!!) that seemingly doesn't have a lot to do with each other, and the stories not overlapping with each other a whole lot, until there's a somewhat tying up of all the characters into the same story at the very end.

Most of the book is not even concerned with the titular Railway, but instead recounts various more of less fantastic stories of the inhabitants of the uzbek town of Gilas, characters of all kinds of ethnicities, religions and social-statuses.

Ismailov does however do one thing I like a lot, and that is the mixing of western philosophers (Beauvoir, Sarte etc.) with Soviet leaders, philosophers, authors, Persian poets, Uzbek and Kyrgyz cultural personalities and much more, weaving a multi-cultural tapestry bringing the whole world together in Gilas. Chingiz Aitmatov, the most famous Kyrgyz author, whom i've also read before even makes an appearance.

The book is heavy in soviet and uzbek cultural and historical references, luckily theres a vast number of footnotes to explain a lot of them, but it still takes an effort to comprehend everything that is going on.

I'm still not at all sure what the themes and main storyline of this book actually is, or what even happened for the most part, but somehow it was still enjoyable - atleast a times.

[Baklavahalva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, it's extremely postcolonial magical-realist, which means you can expect tears to destroy cinema carpets, people to be able to remove shadows, enormous penises to bring down a fence, and similar things, while the characters invoke Communist leaders and Allah. Everyone's fighting for their own personal interest, absolutely willing to have their adversaries, whether politicians, musicians, or bazaar sellers, sent to Gulag. Almost everybody at some point in this book gets sent to a labor camp. Yet somehow many parts of The Railway made me laugh out loud.

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 4 out of 5]

In its setup, this novel reminded me of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio: a large number of characters weaving into and out of the individual stories centred around a small village. Where Anderson's stories are often dull and disappointing, though, Ismailov's stories are crazy and entertaining.
Overall, this book depicts the ridiculous aspects of the Soviet state impinging on traditional Central Asian society and it does so in an inimitable way. Some stories are better than others, but all are very entertaining.

[Rosamund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary book that roams through the 20th century history of Soviet Central Asia through the stories of the eccentric inhabitants of a town along the Moscow-Uzbekistan railway. Funny, dark, dramatic and inconsequential in turns. Satirical but affectionate picture of how tradition and communism collide.

[Katia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt like one huge inside joke between the Soviet people of Uzbekistan, that I was evidently not privy to. And that I doubt anyone would be, unless you were personal friends with Ismailov. Each tale sounded like that one random story that that one random guy would say at a party that isn’t really funny at all and uses niche references that just leave you feeling stupid and politely fake chuckling.

The cover says that it’s similar to ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and it is, but somehow not as well done. It’s the same type of magical realism, with hundreds of characters that all do weird shit which leads to even weirder scenarios. It’s impossible to follow who everyone is, and how they’re related to each other, and at about ten pages you stop caring and then it all just feels somewhat like gobbledygook. You start to think: what’s the point? Why does it matter? Who the hell is this? Do I care?

There’s no overarching plot which means that you just have no idea what the hell is going on. And the stories are insane and feature an overwhelming amount of rape, sex, circumcision (???), and death. Simply not fun.

Also, there’s an overwhelming amount of references to specific Soviet figures, or events or niche cultural objects or songs that mean you have to constantly flip to the notes at the end of the book. It was interesting. But Ismailov was trying to be funny, and I just didn’t get it at all because I’m not ‘in the know.’ So at the end I just felt dumb. Which wasn’t pleasant.

But, he did provide a very cool description of Uzbek society at the time! I learned about pretty much every set of people that lived there, and you get a good sense of how the Soviet Union changed and what projects it started and failed. You get a more interesting perspective on the people than you would if you were to read an encyclopedia, but you have to wade through absolute nonsense to get it.

[Jane Fudger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult novel to read partly due to the number of characters - approximately 136. I found that this caused the reading of the novel to become disjpointed as I was constantly referring back to the list of characyers to remind me who I was reading about. One review I Rread reminde the reviewer of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" b y Gabriel Garcia Marquez which I agree with.
The novel is set in the small town of Gilas in Uzbekistan and the plot is centred around the railway and the economic and travelling influence it brought to the town and how the inhabitants - Russians, Uzbecs, Mullahs, Jews, Gypsies, Tatars. Bolsheviks - related to these influences.
The stories of the characters is witty, funny, sad and colourful giving both a comic and serious picture of small town life in Uzbekistan. An excellent story which I enjoyed but I think it will need a reread to understand the novel better

[Rosie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this very difficult to read. It tells lots of different short stories of the people who live in the town of Gilas, where the railway line comes through. It is funny at times (but not very often) and occasionally people's lives intertwine so you start to understand the connections, but a lot of the time it just felt very rambling. It was interesting to learn how many different ethnic groups lived in the area; the historical notes in the back were very helpful in filling in what happened at certain points. So I did learn something about the various cultures colliding there, and especially how this part of the world was impacted by the rise of the Soviet Union. I think anyone who has lived in the area or even visited it would appreciate it a lot more than I did - I found it all a bit incomprehensible!

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The novel takes place in Uzbekistan, and features a huge, diverse cast of characters, representatives from the many ethnic groups in the area. I found the first part to be funny and poignant with a meandering but engaging voice. Each of the characters has a nickname reflective of a defining characteristic, such as Opok-Lovely or Umarali-Moneybags, which definitely helped with remembering them (also useful is an appendix at the end of the book listing all the characters). Unfortunately, as the novel progressed, it got increasingly dark and violent, and the main story arc (if there was one) seemed to get lost in the wandering voice. I'm sure my unfamiliarity with the area also affected my ability to understand the nuances of the story.

[Mike Losavio · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea of the book has a lot of potential. Investigating the effect of Bolshevism on the lives of ordinary people from multitude of ethnic backgrounds drew me in from the very first page. Yet I was disappointed by the lack of structure around the stories. Reading each of them felt like seeing a corner of a Rembrandt painting - it's the entire composition that makes the Dutch painter a genius, not the tiny squares torn out of it. Similarly, I had a lot of hope going into each one and was let down every time.

That being said, I still think this is a fascinating book for people who have studied Uzbek history and have an interest in the region. I would return to it after doing some research.

[Aaron Duhwit · Rating 2 out of 5]

a book of intersecting stories of a cast of dozens in a soviet uzbek town, with humourous, sad, disturbing, and biting anecdotes of life before and during communism in now-uzbekistan.

occasionally, though increasingly, i'd lose the thread of the thing. the cast of characters became difficult for me to keep track of, and certain motivations, insinuations, and allusions were lost on me (or more likely just went over my head). but i like Ismailov's voice, and the initiation to a small place, with a great history of many peoples, living their own idiosyncratic lives.

[Carmen Distratto · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I read from this author and I'm so glad I did, because it opened my mind to other worlds and perspectives so difference from my European centered gaze.
What I especially liked was the funny and engaging style, which kept me reading even though I had to interrupt often to read the necessary notes at the end of the book.
I also found useful the preface written by the translator, because it helped me to better enter in the mood of book.
I really appreciate Hamid Ismailov's work and can't wait to read further works by him.

[Melissa Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, in the way a multigenerational novel set on the Uzbek steppes and bordering on magical realism can be. You'll be doing a lot of googling about local history, you'll realise how little you know, you'll learn a lot, and it will be well worth it even if in the end, you have no idea what you just read

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a confusing collection of stories set in the town of Gilas, along the Silk Road in Uzbekistan. Many of the gigantic cast of characters were pretty awful people and some engaged in incredibly violent activity that was uncomfortable to read about. There were some moments of humour and poetic writing but this was not a book I would want to engage with again.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed by the wasted potential. This book needs a massive trigger warning for elements that greatly decreased my enjoyment of the narrative: frequent child rape/sexual assault, rape of both men and women, physical and mental abuse, incest, bestiality, abuse of neurodivergent characters.

[Navida · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too confusing. I had to jump around in the book and try to grasp a few pages of this character's story and then a few pages of that character. I did enjoy the preface by the translator which gave me some context. But it still didn't give me enough to make reading this very easy.

[Donna Mccoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the book but must say it reads more like a sprinkling of short stories than a novel such as I was expecting. Interesting characters and good slice-of-life “action” relevant to the Soviet period of Uzbekistan.

[Ee Cheng Ooi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult book to read. One that I'll return to in greater detail some day.

[Alexis Lavail · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could not finish the book. I felt confused all along, as each story does not stitch much with each other