The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years in Around the World in 80 Books

Dec 25, 2020 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: novels, translated-fiction, setting-asia

Set mostly in a small railroad crossing in Kazakhstan's Sarozak desert sometime in the latter part of the 20th-century, this novel tells the story of Burrunyi Yedigei's effort to bury his coworker and friend in the ancient cemetery used by the few people of the area. In doing so, Aitmatov mounts a subversive critique of the Soviet system that crushes traditions and unfairly persecutes people. The story is told through Yedigei, a long-suffering worker who recounts episodes from his life along wit Set mostly in a small railroad crossing in Kazakhstan's Sarozak desert sometime in the latter part of the 20th-century, this novel tells the story of Burrunyi Yedigei's effort to bury his coworker and friend in the ancient cemetery used by the few people of the area. In doing so, Aitmatov mounts a subversive critique of the Soviet system that crushes traditions and unfairly persecutes people. The story is told through Yedigei, a long-suffering worker who recounts episodes from his life along with a old tales drawn from Central Asian folklore. A running subplot involves a nearby cosmodrome (presumably Baikonur), and a joint Soviet-American space station which makes contact with a utopian alien race. This seems to be an attempt to link the lives of insignificant workers with earth-shattering events, or is perhaps an allegory about the Iron Curtain vis a vis the West. Or more likely, Aitmatov is attempting to tell a story in the past (folktales), present (the burial plot), and future (space). Whatever the intent, the space material feels very awkward and anyone coming to the book for science-fiction will be disappointed.

The real core and strength of the story is the insight into the hard lives of the Kazakh rail workers and the way in which Aitmatov uses the genre trappings of Soviet Realist literature to mount a rather subversive critique of life in the USSR. We learn of the post-WWII hardship that took Yedigei and his wife Ukubala to the rail crossing, and of their daily struggle to survive there. There are plenty of other threads, most importantly the arrival of a politically suspect family looking for a place to start over, their friendship with Yedigei, the desire the wife arouses in him (echoing one of the folktales), and finally the Orwellian tragedy that takes them away. Here, Aitmatov is directly criticizing the Stalinist purges in which his own father was executed in the 1930s (the book first appeared in 1980, so he does so from a position of relative safety). There is also a running thread about Yedigei's fierce camel, a barely domesticated proud and fierce beast which is a metaphor for the Central Asian people subjugated under Soviet rule.

The death of Yedigei's friend Kazangap is the inciting event that allows for everything else to be told, as Yedigei organizes the community for the wake and burial, to be done in the traditional way. However, tradition is not what it used to be, and Kazangap's son and relations are less than enthusiastic about the whole matter, long having fled for the modern world of the city. Moreover, the traditional funeral train of camels is augmented by a truck and tractor to assist in the grave-digging. Indeed, the clash of the modern Soviet world with the traditional Kazakh extends even to burial grounds, as the procession is denied access to the old Ana-Beiit cemetery. This relates directly to what is perhaps the novel's primary theme: cultural memory. One of the folk tales recounts how Mongol conquerors tied bands around the heads of captured enemies and allowed them to shrink, turning the wearer into a mindless slave without a memory. This crops up in the space subplot, when two cosmonauts who glimpse the utopian future are doomed to have their minds wiped. All of which relates to the Soviet attempt to eliminate cultural memory in Central Asia (embodied here in the denial of access to the traditional cemetery). This is without a doubt a book of great importance to those interested in Soviet or Central Asian literature, but others will probably not find it that compelling. ...more

Like · see review

Nov 24, 2019 Bogdan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It is obvious that Aitmatov is a great story teller. I really liked the melange of the old (Asian myths and legends) with the new (space exploration, dystopia elements of alien race encounter).

1 like · Like · see review