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. 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 Romani.

HAMID ISMAILOV is an Uzbek journalist, novelist, poet, and translator who was born in the Soviet Union in 1954 in what is now Kyrgyzstan. In 1992 he was forced to flee his home in the Uzbek capital Tashkent when his writing drew negative attention from government officials. Under threat of arrest he moved to London and now heads the Central Asian division of the BBC World Service.