The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov, translated by John French

I thought this would be a science-fiction story, because I vaguely remember phrases like “aliens” and “building rockets around the world” when I first saw it in a random booklist. But it’s actually first of all a story about a man’s life in the Soviet Union, and the life and deaths of his friends. It happens in the Soviet Union, but this story is not set at the center of it. Not the glorious Motherland Russia that started the revolution, but in Kazakhstan, where religion, traditions, and old legends are perhaps a bit more at odds with the Soviet ideals.

It’s a somber story, although at times it feels like an elaborate Soviet joke, with both the story teller and the listener aware of the hopelessness of it all, but still making the most out of the situation. Life goes on and there must be hope for the future somewhere.

This is, in my opinion, a much better book than How the Steel was Tempered, which was a mandatory read for school kids in China (at least back in the days). I wish I had the pleasure of reading Aitmatov’s story instead.

This bit interesting commentary came from the book’s preface, written by the author himself (this book was published in 1988):

A man without a sense of history, without memory of the past, who is forced to reconsider his place in the world, a man deprived of the historic experience of his own and other peoples, lacks any perspective and can only live for the present, for the day. To prove this, one has only to recall the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China, which manipulated the consciousness of the people and reduced the many complications of life to the level of quotations from the so-called little Red books of Mao. Here, the ancient traditions of the people clashed with the hegemonic policies of the then Chinese government. Paradoxically this denial or falsification of the past went hand in hand with a self-satisfied, boastful chauvinism. The result was isolation; for only behind a real or metaphorical Wall of China can one preserve the myth of the superiority of one people over all others.

This is such a sick burn given today’s politics. Some thirty years later both the real and metaphorical Wall of China is getting higher and thicker than ever. I guess thirty years is still too little time to really learn anything, especially if you’re not trying very hard.