The Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian – review

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/10/the-last-quarter-of-the-moon-chi-zijian-review

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Chi Zijian's epic novel (translated by Bruce Humes) is narrated by a nameless woman of the Evenki people, who have traditionally lived as nomads in the far north of China, on the border with Russia. At first, as the woman looks back over her long, incident-filled life, it's almost impossible to place the events she recounts at fixed points in time. Life continues as it has done for centuries: the Evenki build their birch-bark tepees, tend the reindeer that make life possible in such an extreme climate, celebrate their shamanistic relationship with nature, and live, love and die. But, as her life wheels through passionate relationships, the births of her children, the deaths of more and more family members (such abundant and varied deaths!), gradually events intrude which start to pinpoint time. Japan invades China; the Chinese go to war with Russia. Increasingly, military and industrial activity impinges on the timeless world of the Evenki, and they are powerless to fend it off. By the time the narrator's life has been brought more or less up to date, one senses that their culture, so enthrallingly evoked, is doomed.

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