The Railway, by Hamid Ismailov, translated by Robert Chandler

A shining satire of orphans of an empire beside Russia's iron road

Hamid Ismailov's scintillating novel is set in Gilas, a fictitious small town on the ancient Silk Road in his native Uzbekistan. The town owes its existence to the "iron road" (Russian for railway) - "a never-ending ladder whose wooden rungs and iron rails lay stretched across the earth". At its heart is the station, which in the Soviet era is also the Party headquarters, the scene of arrivals and departures that mark the inhabitants' destinies.

Gilas has drawn people from all over - Armenians, Kurds, Persians, Ukrainians, Jews, Chechens, Koreans, gypsies, Russians - a "Noah's Ark of humanity", and a "microcosm of the Soviet Empire". The Railway tells the stories of some of them - a teeming "ill-assorted tribe" of funny, eccentric, sinister, charming characters, known by nicknames.

Umarali-Moneybag has become rich through money-lending; Uchma-Prophesies is the gypsy fortune-teller; Mefody-Jurisprudence is the alcoholic intellectual. A lesser writer would have produced several volumes of stories; instead, Ismailov weaves them into a rich, many-coloured tapestry where every strand shines.

Ismailov belongs to the tradition of Russian satirical novelists, from Gogol to Bulgakov and Platonov. Like their novels, The Railway is in turn ironic, hilarious, tender and full of "toska", an "untranslatable word" indicating melancholy and longing. Despite "Russification" and the "indigenisation" of tyranny, the people of Gilas keep their identities through beliefs, customs and ingenuity. The book abounds in vivid scenes as they try to foil the Party apparatchiks.

At the heart of the novel is the Boy, an orphan being brought up by relatives. He represents the millions of orphans the Soviet Union produced as a result of wars, mass deportations and forced collectivisation. Their state was idealised in children's books and schools - "An orphan's father was Stalin, his grandfather was Lenin."

In a wonderful scene of redemption we see the Boy, angry and miserable, dreaming by the railway line. The whistle of a train startles him, but as it passes, he finds himself blowing a kiss at an unknown girl passenger, crying, "I love you!"

The Railway is a poet's novel, full of memorable descriptive passages and heart-wrenching asides. Robert Chandler's translation admirably renders the exuberance, humour and richness of its language.

Shusha Guppy's 'The Secret of Laughter' is published by IB Tauris