The latest addition to my website is Hamid Ismailov‘s Железная Дорога (Railway), a novel from Uzbekistan. Ismailov actually lives in London and works for the BBC, having left Uzbekistan in 1992. This novel is a series of interconnected stories around the fictitious Uzbek town of Gilas and is similar in form to Fazil Iskander‘s Сандро из Чегема (Sandro of Chegem). The stories are set from the early twentieth century to around 1980 and deal with how the Uzbeks cope with Soviet domination, the various races that live in the area and, of course, their culture. They are funny, colourful and very well told.