The Gray Earth

Taken from his ancestral home—and haunted by the recent onset of visions—the adolescent Dshurukawaa reunites with his siblings at a boarding school, where his brother also serves as principal. There he attempts to mediate the pull of spirituality and pragmatism, old ways and new, but quickly 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 communist party ideals. Soon he and his family are at odds with the system, and when tragedy strikes, Dshurukawaa begins to sense the larger import of his visions.

A second sweeping novel in the saga of the shepherd boy introduced by Tuvan author and shaman Galsan Tschinag in The Blue Sky, The Gray Earth is an unforgettable read, marked by Tschinag’s lyrical language and striking evocation of a singular way of life.

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.