Really interesting glimpse of daily life on the Mongolian steppe

Great story set in the steppes of Mongolia by a great Tuvan author.

#readtheworld Mongolia

5 stars for the anthropological study and the lingering sense that Tschinag just...is. Wow.
I'll probably revise this at some future date, but I need to get the general idea out. This book is five stars because it is quite simply unlike any account I've ever read in its genuineness.
Tschinag discusses his life without a cultural filter. Some practices that would be deemed universally odd in Western society are covered openly, freely, and without a second thought. There are no concessions of "this may seem odd," or "although Western society might not understand" to soften the cultural blow for audiences. Concessions are very occasionally made, but not for the audience, so much as for the general flow. It's a difficult distinction, but it's very much a real one in this story.
Tschinag simply speaks. In this omission of self-consciousness, Tschinag manages a rare account of life without alteration to audience preferences. I genuinely have never seen this in writing before, and I struggle to articulate how significant it is to read something that is not written to win an audience over. There is no marketing, no jabs at the self to seem sufficiently self-effacing to be deemed acceptable in public eye. There is no underlying current of awareness about how he or his story will be perceived. There are points where Tschinag acknowledges his audiences and how his actions may be perceived, but it is not a calculated acknowledgment. It....simply is.
I've said before that sometimes books are like water. Just reading the page provides the same experience as drinking water when you're parched. This is that. And it's that in a new sort of way. I didn't realize how overwhelmingly I am surrounded with content that seeks to snag my attention and cater to its perceived audiences until I got here and read a text that didn't particularly care about how I interacted with it. It's so baffling. It's so wonderful. It's so perplexing. It's so enlightening.

Quote “Our dog Arsylang was asleep next to the dung heap. He was breathing peacefully. Sunlight streamed onto his dark, downy fur and exploded into rays that glittered and danced on the ends of his hair”.

I learnt all about the difficulties of life on the Mongolian steppe


Originally written in german, with a very good translation to english by Katharina Rout, this is a memoir, the first in a trilogy, it starts with the youngest child in a nomadic mongolian family, but as always, there are some details that are probably made up as it would be difficult to remember so many details of the authors childhood. It is written in the first person from the point of view of the boy, and it is written in a style that you see everything through his eyes almost as if it were written by a boy, not an adult.

There are loads of details of the life of the family, which is herding the animals, around the years 1940’s the transport and communication were difficult within the country.

The setting is of course the Mongolian steppe, one of the most amazing places in the world i have visited, the isolation, cold, difficulty of living, but there is something special about this country, it is a place to cure your soul.

The name of the book, The Blue Sky, is so fitting as the sky is endless in Mongolia.

There is no plot, the author relates life on the steppe and you get a strong sense of family and the harshness of life and death and loss. I enjoyed these parts, details of day to day life from the point of view of the boy

The narration is not excellent and the ending is rather sudden, but as this is a part of a trilogy I am sure the author picks up in the second book where he left off here. The ending is tragic, it is so sad but I could sympathize with the boy.

When I started this book I thought it was infantile and badly written, but thinking about it I decided it is actually very good, it must be hard to write from the point of view of a young boy as an adult and make it seem that a young boy wrote it. I give this book 4 stars.

Video review in Spanish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGCRaFk0iSI

Although I appreciated the short length and learning about Tuvan customs (e.g., sniffing relatives who return from a long trip), neither the protagonist nor prose was engaging enough to compensate for this plotless book.