The Blue Sky

by Galsan Tschinag

Book Overview

A boy's nomadic life in Mongolia is under threat in a novel that "captures the mountains, valleys and steppes in all their surpassing beauty and brutality" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

In the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, a young shepherd boy comes of age, tending his family's flocks on the mountain steppes and knowing little of the world beyond the surrounding peaks. But his nomadic way of life is increasingly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1571310649
• ISBN13: 9781571310644
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Incredibly real- this memoir immerses you in Tuvan life in the 1940's

It reads as if the author was truly still a small child narrating his days on the mountains with his dog that is like a brother guardian and with his beloved adopted grandmother. A wonderful book

Simple, Moving Tale

This lovely novel of a nomadic Mongolian family's transition into the modern world (from and about the youngest son's incipient shamanic point of view) is a simple, yet magical, deep and moving story. It made me wish the other two books in the trilogy (his middle and later years I presume) were translated. This is such a beautiful/terrible world of harsh barren life and the conjunction of both the inexorable/inevitable cultural change specific to that time and place and loss of childhood we all experience. It may be simple but it isn't simply a children's tale.