The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov
(translated by Andrew Bromfield)
Book review
Whilst
on a train journey across Kazakhstan, the narrator meets Yerzhan, a
twenty-seven year old itinerant peddler and virtuoso violinist who, strangely,
has the looks and build of a boy of twelve years. After overcoming his initial
diffidence, Yerzhan starts to recount the tale of his childhood. He recalls
growing up in a two-family settlement on a lonely, remote railway outpost in
the Kazakh steppes, close to a top-secret “Zone” where Soviet nuclear
experiments were carried out. He tells of his precocious musical talents on the
dombra [lute-like folk instrument] and the violin, and his equally precocious
love for his neighbour Aisulu. Chillingly, he recalls a fateful day when, during
a school outing to the “Zone”, he waded into a radioactive lake to impress his
classmates. Did the poisonous waters stunt his growth or was some other-worldly
spell cast on him?
I suppose Hamid Ismailov’s novella might be regarded as a work of “magical realism”. I would prefer to describe it as a modern-day fable or myth. For what is mythology, if not an attempt to describe and explain the world through stories and symbols? In this case, Ismailov conjures up images of terrible beauty, by means of which he evokes daily life in the Kazakh steppes at the height of the Cold War. Andrew Bromfield's sensitive translation from the original Russian retains a poetic feel to it, as if the prose were permeated with the strains of Yerzhan’s dombra.
I suppose Hamid Ismailov’s novella might be regarded as a work of “magical realism”. I would prefer to describe it as a modern-day fable or myth. For what is mythology, if not an attempt to describe and explain the world through stories and symbols? In this case, Ismailov conjures up images of terrible beauty, by means of which he evokes daily life in the Kazakh steppes at the height of the Cold War. Andrew Bromfield's sensitive translation from the original Russian retains a poetic feel to it, as if the prose were permeated with the strains of Yerzhan’s dombra.
A haunting coming-of-age novel about a boy who does not come of age, this is my favourite amongst the Peirene Press publications I have had the pleasure to read.
***
In case
you were wondering what a dombra is,
here are two clips of Kazakh music featuring the instrument
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