A review by clairewords
The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov

4.0

An astonishing tale tinged with sadness,recounted by Yerzhan to a stranger on a train journey, that is in part imagined by the listener.

Yerzhan grows up at a railway siding, where two families live, their lives more intertwined than appears on the surface. Every so often the ground shakes, another sun rises and everything is still. Then there is the Zone, that area where it is so silent, his ears ring.

Yerzhan learns the violin and is bright, but the real light in his life is Aisula, a light that gradually fades upon his reaching the age of 12, when he walks into the forbidden Dead Lake to impress her and from that day stops growing, destined to watch her pass him.

"And the thing that loomed over him like a visceral fear could happen in the middle of the sweltering summer, when sheep suddenly started bleating as if they were under the knife and went dashing in all directions, cows dug their horns into the ground and the donkey squealed and rolled around in the dust...And a slight rumble would run through the ground, Yerzhan's legs would start trembling,and then his whole body, and the fear would rise up from his shaking knees to his stomach and freeze there in a heavy ache, until the sky cracked over his head and shattered into pieces, crushing him completely, reducing him to dust, to sand, to scraps of grass and wool. And the black whirlwind hurtled past above him with a wild howl."

Full review here at Word by Word.