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The Blue Sky
Galsan Tschinag
Novel, 1994. Translated from German
A Tuvan boy's nomadic childhood in the 1940s-50s western Altai, showing herding life, shamanic beliefs and clan customs.
Books set in Mongolia
Three books that put you in Mongolia. One, The Blue Sky, is by a writer from Mongolia and set there. The other two are wider picks: books by long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well.
About the literature of Mongolia
Mongolian literature begins with The Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century chronicle of Genghis Khan's rise. Alongside written chronicles ran a long oral tradition of epics and songs performed by herders. Very little Mongolian writing has been translated into English, so readers often meet the country through writers working in other languages, or through outsiders who spent time there.
The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag, who writes in German, recalls a Tuvan boy's nomadic childhood in the western Altai in the 1940s and 1950s, with its herding, shamanic beliefs and clan customs. Owen Lattimore's Nomads and Commissars: Mongolia Revisited reports on how herding life changed under collectivization and Soviet influence. Stanley Stewart's In the Empire of Genghis Khan is a travel narrative across the steppe, meeting herders and visiting sites of Mongol history.
By writers from Mongolia
Wider picks
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Mongolia.
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The Horse Boy
Rupert Isaacson
Memoir, 2009
Wider pick: Memoir by a British-born outsider, part of it set elsewhere
A family memoir of travelling Mongolia on horseback to meet shamans and reindeer herders, rich in landscape and spiritual tradition.
When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East
Quan Barry
Novel, 2022
Wider pick: By a Vietnamese American writer, not a Mongolian author
Two brothers, one identified as a reincarnated lama, travel across the Gobi and steppe, showing Mongolian Buddhism, shamanic belief, nomadic life and modern change.
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