Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia [Paperback]

Louisa Waugh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2003

After two years of working in the capital of Mongolia, journalist Louisa Waugh moved to the remote village of Tsengel, in the extreme west of the country. This is the story of the year she spent there, living and working with the people who have made a home in the stark but beautiful landscape. The villagers and their culture vividly emerge as she shares her happiness, frustrations, and occasional extreme loneliness and fear.

Editorial Reviews

Review

With a skill and art quite extraordinary for a first book ... the reader is drawn into the world she describes through the warmth of her friendships and the sympathy and generosity with which she treats all aspects of her subject. I put the book down finally with a sense of absolute satisfaction, having spent the last few hours beneath the spell of a writer of real integrity and power Chris Stewart Her great strength is telling the villager s' stories, which she does with an engaging blend of charm, directness, humour and awe at the power of nature... It is a mark of Waugh's success that the romantic terra incognita she describes, helped by unsentime TLS An elegy to a remarkable part of the world. SUNDAY TIMES Waugh has captured the starkly beautiful landscapes in restrained descriptive passages, but the most fascinating aspect of her narrative is her portrayal of the villagers and the nomads she meets higher up the mountains... HEARING BIRDS FLY is an extraordi OBSERVER

From the Publisher

After two years of working in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, journalist Louisa Waugh moved to the remote village of Tsengel, in the extreme west of the country. This is the story of the year she spent there, living and working with the people who have made a home in the stark but beautiful landscape. With unflinching honesty, Waugh recounts how she slowly learned to fend for herself in a world where life is dominated by the seasons. The villagers and their culture vividly emerge as she shares her happiness, frustrations, and occasional extreme loneliness and fear. Hearing Birds Fly transports the reader from the end of a long, hard Mongolian winter, through a drought–stricken spring, into a lush summer spent in the mountains with a family of nomads. A warm, totally unsentimental account of life in a world where the act of survival is, in itself, a triumph of the human spirit.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034911580X
• ISBN-13: 978-0349115801
• Product Dimensions: 1 x 5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Travel > Asia > Mongolia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Capturing the spirit of Mongolian women, November 11, 2004

By 

Amy Thomson "Amy Thomson" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia (Paperback)

Mongolia is the kind of place that captures the imagination. So big, so cold, so remote. I have had the incredible good fortune to travel there myself. Louisa Waugh does an exceptional job of evoking a sense of the remote village where she lived, and the tough, resourceful people who teach her to survive. There are other writers who have done this, but Waugh has captured the spirit of Mongolian women better than any other writer on the subject. This is a marvelous, beautiful book that makes me miss Mongolia all over again.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Spirit of Place, June 4, 2004

By 

mdo (SF Bay Area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia (Paperback)

This book gave me an intense experience of Tsengel, a village of a few thousand on the farthest western edge of Mongolia. I loved spending four seasons there with Louisa Waugh. The author won the first Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize for a work of fiction or non-fiction (this is non-fiction) "evoking the spirit of a place". Waugh has done this superbly. The reader is there with her so fully because she has added her own joys and hardships of that year in Tsengel without a hint of solipsism. She is a generous woman and a generous author. Reading this boook is a great experience.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well done., August 31, 2006

By 

A. Galperin - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia (Paperback)

Nice book - for once a travel author who isn't full of her (him)self and bores us with the difficulties of adaptating to a different culture or who has to show off her/ his magnificent sense of humor. Simple and well written and most importantly captures the magic of the place and its people. Thanks!