Novel · A way to begin
The Blue Sky
Der blaue Himmel
Galsan Tschinag · 1994
Synopsis
In the nineteen-fifties, on the pastures of the High Altai, a boy from a family of Tuvan herders, aged about five or six, looks after the animals too young, too old or too injured to follow the herd. He dreams of becoming rich with a thousand sheep, lives in the company of his dog Arsylang and of an old woman whom the family adopts as a grandmother, and who tells him stories. The new regime reaches the mountain, worries an uncle who was once rich and replaces the New Year with a winter festival.
Context
Written in German, a language the author made his own during his years in Leipzig, the book appeared in 1994 from Suhrkamp; it is his first novel, a fictionalised memoir of a few years of childhood. The boy bears the author's Tuvan name, Dshurukuwaa, and the book is dedicated to his grandmother. The French translation by Dominique Petit appeared from Métailié in 1996, in the Bibliothèque allemande; the English version by Katharina Rout, under the title The Blue Sky, from Milkweed Editions in 2006.
Who it is for
A short novel, of one hundred and fifty-seven pages in its French translation, written in German by a Tuvan author.
Prizes and reception
Its author's first novel; two French paperback reissues, in 1999 and then in 2004.
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