Book description
'A long-time confidante of the rain and snow, I am ninety years
old. The rain and snow have weathered me, and I too have weathered them'
.
At the end of the twentieth-century an old woman sits among the
birch trees and thinks back over her life, her loves, and the joys and
tragedies that have befallen her family and her people. She is a
member of the Evenki tribe who wander the remote forests of
north-eastern China with their herds of reindeer, living in close
sympathy with nature at its most beautiful and cruel.
An idyllic childhood playing by the river ends with her father's
death and the growing realisation that her mother's and uncle's
relationship is not as simple as she thought. Then, in the 1930s, the
intimate, secluded world of the tribe is shattered when the Japanese
army invades China. The Evenki cannot avoid being pulled into the
brutal conflict which marks the first step towards the end of their isolation.
In The Last Quarter of the Moon, prize-winning novelist Chi
Zijian, creates a dazzling epic about an extraordinary woman bearing
witness not just to the stories of her tribe but also to the
transformation of China.
When you open this book you can feel the grandmother's breath and
hear the hidden voices of the women of the Evenki tribe of northeast
China - a moving story told by a great Chinese writer -- Xinran, Author
Of The Good Women Of China Chi Zijian was born in Mohe in 1964. She
started writing while at school and had her first story published in
Northern Literature
magazine when she was at college. She is the only writer to have won
the Lu Xun Literary Award three times.
The Last Quarter of the Moon
also won the Mao Dun Literary Award. Her work has been translated into
many languages.
