This powerful, sweeping novel continues the saga of Dshurukawaa, the Tuvan shepherd boy introduced in The Blue Sky. Torn between the onset of visions and pressure from his family to attend a state boarding school, the adolescent attempts to mediate the pull of spirituality and pragmatism, old ways and new. Taken from his ancestral home, he reunites with his siblings at a boarding school, where his brother also serves as principal. Soon he comes to understand that the main purpose of the school is to strip the Tuvans of their language and traditions, and to make them conform to party ideals. When tragedy strikes, Dshurukawaa begins to sense the larger import of his visions, and with it a possible escape. Tschinag's lyrical language, his striking characterizations, and his evocation of a singular way of life make The Gray Earth an unforgettable read and a worthy follow-up to The Blue Sky.
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"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
"Milkweed Editions deserves applause for translating this important book into English. Indigenous cultures and languages have been attacked, denied and lost in boarding schools worldwide. It is an investment in our humanity to save and share stories such as this one that allow readers to understand the . . . strangeness of our so-called modern lives." —Minneapolis Star Tribune
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sometimes you can judge a book by it's cover....,
By applewood (everywhere and nowhere) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gray Earth (Hardcover)
I've looked forward to the translation of this book since reading The Blue Sky, the first in Tschinag's autobiographical trilogy of growing up a Tuvan nomad in Mongolia. And it does not disappoint! Beautifully translated from the original German (by Katharina Rout), this tale, and especially the simple, lyrical way Taschinag expresses it, brings up images at the faint edge of memory (collective and personal). This is the path of a specific boy (a particularly wild and bright aspiring nomadic shaman) as he moves into the modern world of education and domestication, but it is also a path we all have traveled from childhood (to the ability to read and appreciate such a novel in the modern world). Although this tale is of a small boy's first year of Communist public schooling (materialistic indoctrination - political and scientific), it is not a children's tale. It is instead both a plain and factual seeming account of his education (the first steps along his personal 'Path of Knowledge', and the transition of Mongolia into the modern world), and a wry allegory told with biting irony and self-deprecating honest of the end of innocence, and life under the Soviet/Mongol totalitarian communist (as his aunt the shaman describes it, "...these days of the big fist and the shrunken, sickened heart."). It is all the more poignant from this child's wiser-than-years perspective. This is really a beautifully produced book as well, and just seeing the cover I knew I was about to enter into a magical, subtle and yet saddening world. The quote from the San Francisco Chronicle on the cover, "Taschinag gives a whole new meaning to the power contained in the written word.", only just hints at the unique and sparkling vision that awaits us inside...And from the opening paragraph we are plunged right in; "At my feet lies a miserable, mute, and fearful sky. It must submit to my battered brass ladle each time my ladle dips in to the clouds. Then the sky shivers and shudders and the clouds blur. Sitting above the sky, I shamanize and fondly consider the sheep whose fleece I am plucking. With each scoop from the river the verse also rises, answering my need."
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Year in the Life of a Mongolian Communist Boarding School,
This review is from: The Gray Earth (Hardcover)
The Gray Earth is the second novel in a series by Mongolian writer Galsan Tschinag, a Tuvan singer, shaman, and leader who writes in German. The first book, The Blue Sky, is narrated by a young shepherd who lives in the high and difficult Altai mountains. The Gray Earth follows the same boy, Dshurukuwaa, for a year as he begins his formal education and is introduced to "civilized" town life.
Dshurukuwaa is taken to boarding school by his principal half-brother in such abrupt haste that he literally forgets his pants. He describes his new surroundings by employing animal similes and metaphors: "I see yurts pushed into a clump like chased lambs" and "the man with the yak-bull hair and horsefly eyes shakes his fists and yells something that sounds like a grown bull plunging his horns between a young challenger's ribs." He recognizes he has entered "a square world" where the roundness of nature is cut, pounded, and moved into obedient rigid shapes, where people live by the clock rather than the natural rhythms of daily work. The plot emerges from his enculturation into Mongolian society and its conflicts with his traditional Tuvan beliefs. Like Tschinag, Dshurukuwaa is a shaman, and "shamanizing" is a crime in this Soviet-influenced Communist system. Even speaking Tuvan is forbidden. He is told by his classmate: "The language itself, like your Tuvan name, is behind the times and cannot be written...We must leave behind everything that is backward. Instead, we must learn the civilized Mongolian language, which will lead us to the bright pinnacles of learning." The novel seems highly autobiographical. The narrator shares the author's Tuvan name and is keenly bright. In an attempt to avoid problems with the Communist party, he maintains perfect grades, but as the year goes on, he feels his very essence being denied: "Are the plants and animals also nothing but bundles of flesh, bone, water, air, and earth? ...I feel empty inside and dull outside--a soulless bundle in a disenchanted world." The Blue Sky was beautifully translated with care and color by the lauded translator Katharina Rout, but in The Gray Earth she employs many stock phrases and clichés, such as "tasty morsels," "bated breath," and "pulling a face." However, Milkweed Editions deserves applause for translating this important book into English. Indigenous cultures and languages have been attacked, denied, and lost in boarding schools worldwide. It is an investment in our humanity to save, document, translate, and share stories such as this one that allow readers to understand the square strangeness of our so-called modern lives.
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