Between Hegemony and Allegory: Chingiz Aitmatov’s 'The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years'

• In Event: Writing the Self, Nation, and Empire

Abstract

Chingiz Aitmatov’s The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years is often read as a negotiation of Soviet modernization’s historical trauma in Central Asia, blending myth, science fiction, and socialist realism. Using Fredric Jameson’s concept of “national allegory,” this paper argues that Aitmatov’s work reveals how Soviet modernity shaped a peculiar form of national allegory that both critiques and participates in imperial narratives. Through the myth of the mankurt, Aitmatov mirrors the actions of empires that he criticizes: constructing “Indigenous” mythologies and producing “native” knowledge.

Author

• Alexey Shvyrkov, Columbia U