Read The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov

From Wikipedia: The novel takes place over the course of a day, which encompasses the railman Burranyi Yedigei's endeavor to bury his late friend, Kazangap, in the cemetery Ana-Beiit ("Mother's Grave"). Throughout the trek, Yedigei recounts his personal history of living in the Sary-Ozek steppes along with pieces of Kazakh folklore. The author explains the term "Saryozeks" as "Middle Lands of Yellow Steppes". Sary-Ozek (or Russified form "Sarozek", used interchangeably in the novel) is also the name of a (fictional) cosmodrome. Additionally, there is a subplot involving two cosmonauts, one American and one Soviet, who make contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial life form and travel to the planet Lesnaya Grud' ("The Bosom of the Forest") while on a space station run co-operatively by the United States and the Soviet Union. The location of the Soviet launch site, Sarozek-1, near Yedigei's railway junction, intertwines the subplot with the main story.