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Mongolia / All works

Novel

Үүрийн туяа

Not translated into English

Byambyn Rinchen · 1951

Synopsis

In late nineteenth-century Mongolia, still under Manchu tutelage, herders caught in debt to Chinese merchants also suffer the power of the lords. The novel, in three books, follows their lives over several decades, describing in detail the religious ceremonies and customs of the country, and leads them up to the years that prepare the uprising of 1921.

Context

Written from 1951 to 1955 and revised in 1971, the novel appears in three books. Critics reproach it for an archaising language and for long descriptions of religious ceremonies, which the author wanted to preserve as a heritage. He dedicates it to the Russians, “people of science and labour”. A Russian translation, Заря над степью, appears in 1972. The author then writes a novel about the clans of the Stone Age, conceived as the beginning of a cycle leading up to this book.

Who it is for

More than six hundred pages in Mongolian, divided into three books; a Russian translation exists, none in French.

Prizes and reception

Regarded as its author's major work and as the first novel published in Mongolia about the 1921 revolution.

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