The Blue Sky: Summary and book reviews of The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag, plus links to an excerpt from The Blue Sky and a biography of Galsan Tschinag.
The Blue Sky A Novel
by Galsan Tschinag
Hardcover: Sep 2006,
192 pages.
Paperback: Nov 2007,
224 pages.
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 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.
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.
Galsan Tschinag's autobiographical story of a boy living on the Mongolian steppes (prairies) in the 1950s offers an evocative glimpse into a way of life in which the nomadic people live in harmony with their awesome (in the literal sense) surroundings, worshiping the sky as sacred. It is a record of a time that was already vanishing (but, thanks in part to Tschinag and others, is now being not just preserved but lived once again). (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Publishers Weekly
Descriptions of the Altai mountains, remarkable sky, and closeness to the flock are slow but rich. The book is filled with small pleasures.
Library Journal
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 Grey Earth and The White Mountain.
Booklist - Donna Seaman
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.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by NRL superb writing! Galsan has such an unique style of writing. Being able to write in a foreign language, yet to describe the life of nomad people, is incredible!
The book makes you realize that you're who you are, especially coming from the part of the world and... Read More
To reach the homeland of the Tsengel Tuvans one has to travel to the furthest western
corner of Mongolia, to the
High Altai mountains to a province the size of the
Netherlands, bordering China. More than 90%
of the population of the area are Kazakh
Muslims, the remaining 10% are Khalkh,
Urinakhai, Khoshuud and Tuvans.
The Tuvans are a Turkic-speaking people
(i.e. their spoken language belongs to
the Turkic family; other Turkic speaking
countries include Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan
and, of course, Turkey). Today, about
4,000 of Mongolia's approx 2.3 million
population identify themselves as Tuvan.
Tschinag writes in The Caravan
that the Mongolian majority's regard for
the Tuvans brings to mind the Chinese's
regard for the Tibetans or the Russians
for Chechnya. While an additional
200,000 Tuvans live in China, the vast...
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of 5
by NRL
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