Two Stops Past Siberia

Allegedly a dual story taken place over one day and a century, the title should, as one would expect, be taken as a metaphor.

However, there is a dual story going on in the book. At the same time that Yedigei, the protagonist, is taking his recently deceased friend to their traditional cemetery in deep in the Kazakh steppe, a Soviet/American cooperative space station is making first contact with the denizens another planet.

The story itself primarily revolves around the memories of Yedigei, a former WWII soldier and shell-shock recoveree. A man who began his life on the shores of the Aral Sea, Yedigei spends the majority of the book reminiscing on his childhood there, his journey to his position as a railway worker deep in the steppe, and the life that he’s had there. Along with this, we are graced with the relevant legends of the steppe.

The real passion in the book, however, lies in the grace with which it’s written. Aitmatov takes the vastness of space, the ocean, and the steppe, and illustrates it with his very language. With every change of location, whether it be to the space station, the ocean vessel that monitors it, or to Yedigei’s desert, he introduces them with a consistent collection of words. This conscious repetition gives the reader a vague, tactile impression that he might actually understand some of what the characters do.

In another way, the book is vaguely reminiscent of American Great Depression writing. Aitmatov’s repetition seems somehow familiar to the repetition of the small chapters that give poetic interludes to the main chapters in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Aitmatov’s character’s also run into challenges donned on them by the powerful. However, instead of robber-barons and landowners, the powerful here are Soviet party members on political purges.

Furthermore, anyone with familiarity to Central Asian culture will delight in the local references. The Ala-Too mountains, the camels, and the capital of Kazakhstan, called in the local language “Alma-Ata” or “Father Apple.”

To those unfamiliar with the region, the story will come off as genuine and universal, but the strangeness of the specific elements will make it seem as though it is from a parallel universe.

Highly Recommended.