LIKE THIS BOOK?
TELL YOUR FRIENDS
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-57131-055-2
Pages: 192
Publish Date: Dec, 2006
Genre: Fiction
The Blue Sky
A Novel
BY Galsan Tschinag
In the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, the nomadic Tuvan people’s ancient way of life collides with the pervasive influence of modernity as seen through the eyes of a young shepherd boy. The confrontation comes in stages. First his older siblings leave the family yurt to attend a distant boarding school. Then the boy’s grandmother dies, and with her the boy’s connection to the tribes. But the greatest tragedy strikes when his dog, Arsylang—“all that was left to me”—dies after ingesting poison set out by the boy’s father to protect his herd from wolves. “Why is it so?” he cries out in despair to the Heavenly Blue Sky, but he is answered only by the silence of the wind.
The debut of a major voice in contemporary world literature.
Rooted in the oral traditions of the Tuvan people and their epics, Galsan Tschinag’s novel weaves the timeless story of a boy poised on the cusp of manhood with it the tale of a people’s vanishing way of life.
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:
The Gray Earth
The second novel in an epic trilogy of a Tuvan boy's coming of age in communist Mongolia. Tschinag . . . gives a whole new meaning to the power contained in the written word.
—San Francisco Chr
Read more ›
The Blue Sky
The debut of a major voice in contemporary world literature. In the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, the nomadic Tuvan people's ancient way of life collides with the pervasive influence of m
Read more ›
"One of those rare books that even when read in solitude makes you feel as if you've just been told a story while surrounded by family and friends in front of a fire. . . . A book that celebrates kinship, mirrors history and captures the mountains, valleys and steppes in all their surpassing beauty and brutality."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune"In this pristine and concentrated tale of miraculous survival and anguished loss, Tschinag evokes the nurturing warmth of a family within the circular embrace of a yurt as an ancient way of life lived in harmony with nature becomes endangered."
—Booklist"Book by book, Tschinag is championing his people and preserving their traditions."
—San Francisco Chronicle"The story that lies behind Galsan Tschinag's The Blue Sky is as thrilling as the novel itself. . . . Tschinag makes it easy for his readers to fall into the beautiful rhythms of the Tuvans' daily life."
—Los Angeles Times
