Novel
Тунгалаг Тамир
Not translated into English
Chadraabalyn Lodoidamba · 1962
Synopsis
At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the Tamir valley, in still feudal Mongolia, Erdene is thrown into prison after a conflict with the local chiefs. Crushed by taxes, he leaves for the capital with his wife Dolgor and their son Bat, then hires himself out to the rich Itgelt. His younger brother, Tömör, lives as an outlaw in the hills and steals horses for the benefit of the poor. The Chinese invasion, the struggle for independence and the revolution sweep up the two brothers.
Context
The novel appears in two volumes, in 1962 and 1967, then in a complete edition in 1971; it has some one hundred and thirty characters spread over three generations, from 1914 to the autumn of 1932. It is translated into Russian, Czech, Romanian, Bulgarian, Vietnamese and Japanese, into German from the Russian, and into Chinese in 1984. From 1970 to 1973 Ravjagiin Dorjpalam made a series of films from it. The French translation by the ethnologist Typhaine Cann appears in 2024 from Transboréal, which the publisher presents as the first novel translated from Mongolian into French.
Who it is for
A sprawling novel of nearly nine hundred pages in French, with many characters; a few landmarks on the revolution of 1921 help.
Prizes and reception
Regarded in Mongolia as the best national novel of the twentieth century; State Prize in 1971, included in the school curriculum.
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