The White Mountain - by Galsan Tschinag (Paperback)

About the Book

"Tschinag gives a whole new meaning to the power contained in the written word."--San Francisco Chronicle

Book Synopsis

The final installment in the saga of the shepherd boy first introduced in The Blue Sky and The Gray Earth, weaving the timeless tale of a boy on the cusp of manhood with the story of a people on the threshold.

Dshurukuwaa has been sent to school in a provincial capital after being taken from his homeland in the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia. Torn between his people's traditional nomadic life and his early calling as a shaman on one hand, and the relative prosperity offered by a socialist education and conformity with modern ideals on the other, he falls in love with a young woman, and first experiences sexual intimacy. Still, the traditional world of his childhood--rich with nature, spirits, and a belief in Father Sky and Mother Earth--calls, and Dshurukuwaa cannot resist.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Gray Earth and The Blue Sky

"The story that lies behind this novel is as thrilling as the book itself. . . . Tschinag makes it easy for his readers to fall into the beautiful rhythms of the Tuvans' daily life."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"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. He gives a whole new meaning to the power contained in the written word."--San Francisco Chronicle

"With the U.S. debut of The Blue Sky, English readers for the first time have direct access to a memorable native Tuvan voice."--Bloomsbury Review

"The writing and the translation are both skilled, the book is poetic, touching, and enjoyable. Tschinag succeeds in conveying universal aspects of the human experience, along with the specifics of Tuvan life."--Straight.com

"With this translation of a novel by Tschinag, a shamanic chieftain of the Tuvans, Anglophone readers now have a first literary glimpse into the nomadic life of the high Altai mountains. Recommended."--CHOICE

"[The Blue Sky] is filled with small pleasures."--Publishers Weekly

"Tschinag's beautiful descriptions of his stark and remote mountain homeland and the emotion he evokes through details about the family's daily life will make readers eager for the next installments of Tschinag's tale: The Gray Earth and The White Mountain."--Library Journal

"The hero may be a simple shepherd boy, but his tale is nothing short of epic. With this novel, a Mongolian shaman has stepped onto the stage of world literature."--Der Spiegel

"Tschinag's books have reached well beyond his native Altai mountains, and with good reason. They speak of a true partnership between people and nature, and in a language as clear and stark as the steppes."--Südwest Presse

"Tschinag describes the strenuous days spent between the herd of sheep and the yurt with both affection and precision, and evokes the stunning landscape in a particularly memorable way, all if contributing to the unlikely sense one has as a reader that we are remembering our own childhood."--Die Welt

"This is a landscape we might never have known--a line of snow-white yurts stretching across the steppes, the dark and frozen ground of the winter camps, the disappearing glaciers, the flocks and herds. The ground beneath this novel slips under your feet even as you read; a landscape threatened by global warming and other environmental degradations; a way of life disappearing faster than you can turn the pages--yak cheese, mutton and dried juniper. A language fighting for its life."--Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Galsan Tschinag, whose name in his native Tuvan language is Irgit Schynykbaj-oglu Dshurukuwaa, was born in the early forties in Mongolia. From 1962 until 1966 he studied at the University of Leipzig, where he adopted German as his written language. Under an oppressive communist regime he became a singer, storyteller, and poet in the ancient Tuvan tradition. As a chief of Tuvans in Mongolia, Tschinag led his people, scattered under Communist rule, back in a caravan to their original home in the high Altai Mountains. Tschinag is the author of more than a dozen books, and his work has been translated into many languages. He lives alternately in the Altai, Ulaanbaatar, and Europe.

Katharina Rout teaches English and comparative literature at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Her translations of contemporary German literature have been acclaimed widely.