'A haunting and resonant fable.' Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT ------ 'A tantalising mixture of magical and grim realism ... a powerful study of alienation and environmental catastrophe.' David Mills, SUNDAY TIMES ------ 'A poetic masterpiece, a novella of shocking legacies, alien beauty and blistering emotional intensity.' Pam Norfolk, LANCASHIRE EVENING POST ------ 'A writer of immense poetic power.' Kapka Kassabova, GUARDIAN ------ 'A novella which draws on myth, fairy tale, poetry and traditional story-telling, it stirs them together to create an unusual parable of a modern arms race cruelly impacting on a traditional way of life.' Elizabeth Buchan, DAILY MAIL ------ 'This superb novella ... reads like a modern fairy-tale, full of a surreal yet mundane horror.' Lesley McDowell, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY ------ 'Central Asian storytelling at its best.' Marion James, TODAY'S ZAMAN
Born in 1954 in Kyrgyzstan, Hamid Ismailov moved to Uzbekistan as a young man. He writes both in Russian and Uzbek and his novels and poetry have been translated into many European languages, including German, French and Spanish. In 1994 he was forced to flee to the UK because of his 'unacceptable democratic tendencies'. He now works for the BBC World Service. The Railway was his first novel to be published in English in 2006, followed by A Poet and Bin-Laden in 2012. His work is still banned in Uzbekistan today.