The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction

Russia, Soviet Union, and Central Asia

RUSSIA

The late nineteenth century may have been the heyday of Russian literature, with the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) and Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) and the short stories of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) on any short list of literary classics of the modern era. But even during the long Soviet period (1917–1991), a considerable amount of remarkable work was written. Dissident voices, in particular, attracted attention in the West, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, few contemporary Russian authors besides Boris Akunin (b. 1956), with his historical detective fiction, and Victor Pelevin (b. 1962) are widely published or read abroad.

Along with the poets of the early Soviet period, fiction by authors such as Isaac Babel (1894–1940), Andrey Platonov (1899–1951), and Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) have proved lasting, and even though the work of Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) has not remained as popular in the United States, it was very influential in the developing world. Under Joseph Stalin, the mandated socialist realism was briefly taken to extremes, but the cultural thaw after his death in 1953 resulted in somewhat more permissiveness by the authorities. Nevertheless, aside from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s (1918–2008) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962, numerous English translations, most recently the authorized version in 1990), most of the great Soviet novels of the next few decades were first published abroad, beginning with Boris Pasternak’s (1890–1960) Doctor Zhivago (1957, English 1958, 2010).

Mostly because of political conditions, many Russian writers left the country after the 1917 October Revolution. Among those who left at the Soviet takeover was Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin (1870–1953), who continued to write about his homeland while in exile. The young Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) first achieved success with his Russian works, written mainly in Berlin, before emigrating to the United States and switching to English. Beginning in the 1960s, a wave of dissident authors moved abroad, almost all continuing to write in Russian. More recently, a new generation of Russian-born but English-writing authors have established themselves in the United States. While Gary Shteyngart (b. 1972) left the Soviet Union as a child, Olga Grushin (b. 1971), Anya Ulinich (b. 1973), Lara Vapnyar (b. 1971), and Ekaterina Sedia (b. 1970) are among those writers who came to America during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

While much of the officially sanctioned fiction published in the Soviet Union was hopelessly idealistic, depicting the great promise of a workers’ state, an astonishing percentage of dissident Soviet and then Russian novels—or at least of those translated into English—are dystopian fantasies of the Russian future. Beginning with Yevgeny Zamyatin’s (1884–1937) We (1920/1921, numerous English translations), the nightmarish potential of totalitarianism has been a popular subject. By the 1970s, many of these dystopias referred explicitly to Soviet institutions and were set in some form of the Soviet empire. This trend of fiction involving very dark futuristic visions of what Russia might become has continued almost unabated.

Much of the finest Soviet literature was suppressed and could not readily be published either domestically or abroad, leading to a lag between when it was written and when it became available. Novels such as Andrey Platonov’s dark satirical tale of early collectivization, The Foundation Pit (English 1973, 1975, 1996), did not appear in Russian for more than three decades after it was written, and even then, only abroad. Vasily Grossman’s (1905–1964) magnum opus of World War II, Life and Fate (English 1985), was first published posthumously in 1980. These and other works continue to complete the picture of the Soviet era, but because many became accessible to readers in Russia itself only with the collapse of the Communist state, they are an odd literary discontinuity. Similarly, the samizdat and dissident literature that was most familiar to Western audiences was generally not widely circulated inside Russia itself. From the 1960s onward, much of the sizable unofficial literature was published abroad and in translation but not in Russia itself (beyond the limited circulation of samizdat). The officially sanctioned local literature published in the Soviet Union was (and remains) little known abroad.

Few authors were able to reach readers both inside and outside the Soviet Union. The authorities tolerated little that could be considered critical, while foreign publishers showed little interest in the domestically sanctioned and popular Russian fare of the times. Writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) were rendered voiceless in Russia, at best able to publish abroad or to go—or be forced—into exile. After he was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature and several of his texts that could not appear in the Soviet Union were published abroad, Solzhenitsyn was expatriated in 1974.

Solzhenitsyn’s forceful narratives of the 1960s include One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The First Circle (1968, English 1968, two translations), and Cancer Ward (1968, English 1968/1969, and as The Cancer Ward, 1968) and center on protagonists who are imprisoned or otherwise isolated and marginalized. These works’ initial success was due in part to how they validated Western conceptions of the Soviet system and its abuses, but Solzhenitsyn’s accounts of these individuals’ struggles also have true literary merit. The huge amount of his later writing makes these works even more daunting, and they are of greater documentary than obvious literary interest. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956 trilogy (1973, English 1974–1979) is subtitled An Experiment in Literary Investigation. The Red Wheel cycle, beginning with August 1914 (1971, revised 1983, English 1972, 1989), is a large-scale and very detailed idiosyncratic take on early-twentieth-century Russian history. They remain essential but not easy reading for anyone interested in these periods and events.

• Alexander Zinoviev’s (1922–2006) massive satire is entitled The Yawning Heights (1976, English 1979).

• The title of Venedikt Erofeev’s (1938–1990) alcohol-steeped and darkly comic novel is Moscow to the End of the Line (1973, English 1980, and as Moscow Circles, 1981, and Moscow Stations, 1997).

• The fiction of Yuri Trifonov (1925–1981) is a rare example of work by a widely translated Soviet author who also was successful inside the system.

From the Soviet Union to the New Russia

The satirical fiction of Vladimir Voinovich (b. 1932) continues in the Russian tradition from Nikolai Gogol’s (1809–1852) czarist-era works through the classic novels by Ilya Ilf (1897–1937) and Evgeny Petrov (1903–1942). In his comedy of errors, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1975, English 1977), and its sequel, Pretender to the Throne (1979, English 1981), Voinovich upends many Soviet expectations. The mere concept of a World War II version of Jaroslav Hašek’s good soldier Švejk subverted the traditional glorification of war heroes, and Chonkin’s tragicomic misadventures mock many aspects of the Soviet system. Voinovich emigrated in 1980, but the target of his satire continued to be the Soviet Union, in both the dystopian Moscow 2042 (1987, English 1987), in which he imagines Soviet-style Communism realizing its full and final dreadful potential, and Monumental Propaganda (2000, English 2004), whose characters try to deal with the post-Soviet transition in a sleepy Russian town. Coming at the end of an era that many were glad to see gone, The Fur Hat (1988, English 1989), Voinovich’s tale of the literary hierarchy in the Soviet Union and in the official Writers’ Union, may seem passé, but this melancholy comic tale of a successful but mediocre career literati is still enjoyable.

Andrei Bitov’s (b. 1937) allusive homage to Russian literature, Pushkin House (1978, English 1987), is a much heavier work. With sections of it taking their titles from classic Russian novels and the author frequently commenting on the narrative as it progresses, the novel is a very literary (and literarily referential) work that twists itself into some postmodern knots. Nonetheless, it is a welcome change from the relatively blunt satire or grim realism that often seem to be the only two options in the Soviet writing published in the West. The Symmetry Teacher (2008, English 2014), presented as a translation (of sorts) of an older, apparently lost, text, plays similar literary games as Bitov again pays homage to his literary forebears and the art of storytelling.

The two novellas by Vladimir Makanin (b. 1937) collected in Escape Hatch (1991, English 1996), both written as the Soviet Union was collapsing, are dystopian fantasies far from the hopeful works one might have expected at that time. In the title piece, the protagonist—Klyucharyov, a Makanin stand-in who appears in several of his works—lives in a world that is decaying and becoming increasingly dangerous, but through an escape hatch, he also gains access to a subterranean haven with all the trappings of civilized and cultured life. The underground alternative seems to be the better world, yet inevitable doom also seems to hang in the air there. As passage between the worlds becomes more difficult, Klyucharyov must choose between them. In The Long Road Ahead, a utopian society of the future turns out to be living a lie, as it turns out that the food the people consume is not synthetically processed but is still the product of old-fashioned animal slaughter and butchery. When the main character makes this discovery, he finds himself in limbo, unwilling to return to society with this ugly knowledge. Makanin evokes a sense of menace in both novellas, and the blend of the surreal and real is particularly effective. By comparison, Baize-Covered Table with Decanter (1993, English 1995) feels like a step back, as yet another novel revolving almost entirely around an interrogation. Although Makanin creatively catalogs the horrors and psychological games involved, played out in the narrator’s mind, it is hard not to feel that we have been through all this before.

• Yuri Druzhnikov’s (1933–2008) classic novel of the 1960s is Angels on the Head of a Pin (1989, English 2002).

• Mark Kharitonov’s (b. 1937) Lines of Fate (1992, English 1996) uses the device of a scholar piecing together a writer’s life—and, with it, a picture of Soviet history—from his very fragmentary works.

• Yuri Rytkheu’s (1930–2008) fiction takes place on the far eastern Siberian region of Chukotka.

The New Russia

Vladimir Sorokin (b. 1955) briefly popped up in the West with The Queue (1985, English 1988), his miniature of Soviet society. With only the words of those waiting in line to make some sort of purchase, dialogue without any narrative embellishment, the novel is a charming and rich depiction of queuing—a familiar Communist-era institution with its own rules and customs, in which just the possibility of obtaining something, even without knowing what it was, was enough to make people line up. When Sorokin finally resurfaced in translation two decades later, with Ice (2002, English 2007), he seemed like an entirely different author. Ice tells the story of a bizarre cult and the search for the chosen few, which is expanded in Bro (2004) and 23,000 (2005), published together with Ice as the middle volume as the Ice Trilogy (English 2011). At times, the trilogy can be a frustrating grab bag that mixes allegory and thriller but, in its scope and reach, is often compelling. Sorokin is one of the leading, most controversial, and prolific Russian authors, and more of his work will inevitably be made available in English, most of it along the lines of the often brutal but imaginative Ice Trilogy, or A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik (2006, English 2011), yet another Russian dystopia, set in 2027, in which the country returns not only to Soviet ways but also to much earlier czarist institutions.

Victor Pelevin (b. 1962) is the most original popular voice to come out of Russia. His everyday premises and situations tend toward the absurdist, and with characters that inhabit different time frames or that acquire different corporeal forms—humans that are also insects, or were-foxes (as opposed to werewolves) that take on a human appearance—he sometimes founders in his excesses, especially when he indulges in philosophical and metaphysical speculation. At least parts of his work can delight with their mind-boggling invention, but Pelevin is at his best in more narrowly focused works such as Omon Ra (1992, English 1994). The young narrator of this novel sees his dream of becoming a cosmonaut fulfilled, only to find that the entire Soviet space program is a vast Potemkin village. A clever satire of both the space program and the larger Soviet political system, it is also one of Pelevin’s more controlled efforts. Babylon (published in the United States as Homo Zapiens; 1999, English 2000) skewers Russia’s rapid decline into a society dominated by consumerism and widespread media manipulation and is one of the more amusing pictures of contemporary Russia.

A more ambitious work such as The Clay Machine-Gun (published in the United States as Buddha’s Little Finger; 1996, English 1999) is bound to impress with its creative daring, but Pelevin also makes it easy for himself by resorting to mental instability and dream scenes. In this novel and elsewhere, the surrealism of his fiction eventually feels forced. Similarly, the overcomplicated premises of a novel like The Sacred Book of the Werewolf (2005, English 2008) become a tiresome distraction. The fantastic handiwork of The Life of Insects (1993, English 1996), with its half-human, half-insect world, presenting both a familiar (Russian) and a very strange reality, or the alternate virtual-reality labyrinth he conceives for his modern retelling of the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur in his chat-room dialogue novel, The Helmet of Horror (2005, English 2006), are admirable, but his work rarely manages to be entirely satisfying.

Tatyana Tolstaya’s (b. 1951) The Slynx (2001, English 2003) presents yet another Russian dystopia, describing the very primitive conditions some two hundred years after nuclear catastrophe has struck. In The Slynx, books are reserved for the rulers, and as in Soviet times, literature is regarded as dangerous. Tolstaya uses these conditions to connect this dystopic world to our familiar one. Despite being vividly imagined, too much of The Slynx resembles familiar futuristic fictions. Tolstaya strains to outdo her predecessors in Hieronymus Bosch–like hellish visions but too often loses her focus on the narrative itself.

Prize-winning author Mikhail Shishkin (b. 1961) is one of the leading writers in post–Soviet Russia and has begun to make a great impression abroad as well. Much of Maidenhair (2005, English 2012), the first of his works to be translated into English, consists of the back and forth of dialogue as a Swiss official questions asylum seekers from the former Soviet Union, but the novel also has several different planes. The interpreter who translates from the Russian is both a conduit and narrator as well as the central figure in the novel. Among the projects on which he once worked was a biography of a Russian singer, and along with some of his own memories, the novel contains extensive excerpts from his working material, such as the singer’s diaries, which she began nearly a hundred years earlier. Tying in even myth and ancient history, Shishkin constructs an unusual epic in which he reflects on Russian history, the telling of stories—personal and historic—and human relationships.

Shishkin’s The Light and the Dark (2010, English 2013) is an unusual epistolary novel, the exchange of letters between separated lovers that begins during the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. A tale of lost and impossible love, the chapters alternate between his and her letters in two diverging time lines. Facing an increasingly unbridgeable divide, they ultimately are writing for themselves, not for each other, in a novel that again suggests the power and importance of writing itself.

• Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s (b. 1938) novel of a family in crisis, in a country in crisis, is entitled The Time: Night (1992, English 2000). Her collections of short stories are particularly worth seeking out.

• Vladimir Sharov’s (b. 1952) remarkable Before and During (1993, English 2014) is the first of his works available in English.

• Dmitry Bykov’s (b. 1967) Living Souls (2006, English 2010) is a darkly comic dystopian vision of a future Russia and civil war.

• Ludmila Ulitskaya’s (b. 1943) fiction is worth a look.

Genre Fiction

As in all the Communist nations, little domestic crime and mystery fiction was published during Soviet times. Even though theft and murder could not be entirely ignored, they had to be situated within the prevailing ideological framework. Accordingly, domestic private-eye and detective novels never had a chance, and the formula for procedurals almost always relied on subversive foreign agents being thwarted. However, post–Soviet (and crime-ridden) Russia has seen an explosion of the mystery and thriller genre, although leading authors such as Darya Dontsova (b. 1952) and Alexandra Marinina (b. 1957) have not been translated.

Among the few crime writers to find a wider readership abroad is the prolific and talented Boris Akunin (b. 1956), whose novels are set in prerevolutionary Russia. Akunin’s series of historical mysteries featuring Erast Fandorin offers both local color and clever literary play. Each volume is based on a specific kind of mystery novel, beginning with the conspiracy tale The Winter Queen (1998, English 2003). Balancing irony and respect for the genre, Akunin’s novels are those of a clever, well-read craftsman and are fine examples of what can be done within the framework of the crime novel. The second series is closer to the classic Russian literary tradition. set in the nineteenth century. It begins with Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (1999, English 2007), in which a nun does the investigating.

Science fiction fared somewhat better than crime novels in Soviet times, led by the Strugatsky brothers, Arkady (1925–1991) and Boris (1933–2012). Their stories offer considerably more than mere escapism and stand up well for works in a genre that can quickly become dated. Hard to Be God (1964, English 1973, 2014) is a fine novel in which historians from an advanced civilization travel to a more backward planet where inhabitants are suffering under an increasingly totalitarian regime. One of the historians feels compelled to intervene, raising a number of ethical questions. Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic film Stalker is based on the Strugatskys’ most famous work, Roadside Picnic (1972, English 1977, 2012). In that story, aliens’ detritus is found at various spots on the earth, and even though it appears to be simply the garbage they left behind, it is far more advanced than human technology. These artifacts can be incredibly useful—an apparently endless power supply, for example—but many are also entirely beyond the grasp of human understanding.

Sergei Lukyanenko (b. 1968) is currently immensely popular in Russia, and his elaborate fantasy series that begins with The Night Watch (also published as Night Watch; 1998, English 2006) became the basis of several trashy Russian blockbuster movies. Lukyanenko’s supernatural otherworld, an elaborately imagined reality of so-called Others who exist not only in this world but on another plane as well, has some appeal, especially in the alternate version of contemporary Moscow in which the series starts, but despite their immoderation his novels still rarely go beyond the genre’s limitations.

Despite his differences with the Soviet regime, the most highly regarded and popular Belarusan author, Vasil Bykov (1924–2003), remained in the Soviet Union until its collapse. Only in 1998 did he emigrate from his homeland, a sign of how badly conditions in Belarus had deteriorated in the post-Soviet era under Alexander Lukashenko. Not surprisingly, little fiction of note has emerged recently from this totalitarian outlier of Europe.

Bykov is best known for his realistic wartime novels. In contrast to much war fiction, especially in Soviet literature, his works do not simply glorify the actions and achievements of those involved in the conflict but instead present a more nuanced picture of combat and wartime, taking into account the moral complexities of war. Several of these books have been translated into English, though generally from the Russian versions rather than the Belarusan originals. Sign of Misfortune (1982, English 1990), on the dreadful life of a Belarusan farming couple during the German occupation in World War II, is a bleak but good example of his work and this genre.

Victor Martinovich’s (b. 1977) Paranoia (2010, English 2013) never mentions the author’s native Belarus, but the totalitarian state that is so convincingly depicted in the novel closely resembles it. It is no surprise, then, to learn that the book was removed from local bookstores only a few days after its publication.

Even before the Orange Revolution, which started in the fall of 2004, Ukraine had a burgeoning literary scene, though little of it is apparent in English translation yet.

Yuri Andrukhovych (b. 1960) is the most visible representative of the new Ukrainian wave. In autobiographical works like The Moscoviad (1993, English 2008), about his time studying at the Gorky Institute, Moscow’s famous writers’ school, and the untranslated Taiemnytsia (2007), Andrukhovych depicts the Soviet period in its last days. Poetic excess, in both word and deed, often fueled by alcohol, as well as mind-altered states and uncertain realities figure prominently in much of his work, especially in the fantastical Recreations (1992, English 1998) and Perverzion (1993, English 2005). Andrukhovych’s dense body of work, with its references to the larger contemporary Ukrainian literary scene and his own experiences, is best appreciated together rather than separately, but each volume also can be enjoyed on its own.

Even though Ukrainian-writing authors have begun to enjoy considerable success abroad, the best-known contemporary Ukrainian author, Andrey Kurkov (b. 1961), writes in Russian. Several of his novels are among the most likable entertainments written in that language in recent years. Death and the Penguin (1996, English 2001) is set after the fall of Communism, its protagonist a writer who has adopted a penguin from the local zoo that was not able to provide for the upkeep of the animals any longer and who now makes a living writing obituaries that turn out to be uncomfortably prescient. Their adventures continue in Penguin Lost (2002, English 2004), and both books provide a poignantly amusing view of the first years of the newly independent Ukraine. A Matter of Death and Life (1996, English 2005), in which a man arranges for a hit man to assassinate him but then changes his mind, is also a morbidly funny take on Ukrainian conditions in the mid-1990s.

Oksana Zabuzhko’s (b. 1960) Field Work in Ukrainian Sex (1996, English 2011) features a Ukrainian protagonist who is a guest lecturer at an American university and is looking back on a destructive affair. While much here is familiar, Zabuzhko’s voice and some of the exotic elements suggest a promising talent. The far more ambitious The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (2009, English 2012) is a reckoning with contemporary Ukrainian history and conditions from a feminist perspective, in a complex saga that combines realism and mythical elements.

• Volodymyr Dibrova’s (b. 1951) Peltse (1984) and Pentameron (1993) are comic absurdist novellas still set in the Soviet period. They were published in one volume in English in 1996.

Tucked between Ukraine and Romania, the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic became independent Moldova in 1991. The official national language is Romanian (though it continues to also be called Moldovan, as the Soviets insisted), but almost no fiction from the area has been translated into English. Russian-writing Vladimir Lorchenkov’s (b. 1979) The Good Life Elsewhere (2008, English 2014), a darkly comic tale of Moldovans seeking a better life abroad, follows in the tradition of Soviet-style satire with its absurdist features but also provides an entertaining portrait of the poorest country in Europe.

The Caucasus—the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian that includes the former Soviet states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and Georgia—has a rich literary tradition, though little fiction from the area has been translated into English.

Several works by Otar Chiladze (1933–2009), the leading Georgian writer to emerge in the Soviet Union, have been translated, notably his popular first novel, A Man Was Going Down the Road (1972, English 2012). This is a broad epic about Georgia, especially under Russian rule, that builds on the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Other recent fiction from post–Soviet Georgia includes novels such as Journey to Karabakh (1992, English 2014) by Aka Morchiladze (b. 1966) and Adibas (2009, English 2014) by Zaza Burchuladze (b. 1973)

Abkhazian author Fazil Iskander’s (b. 1929) most impressive work is the collection of connected stories centering on an imaginary Abkhazian village. Although Iskander began writing the stories, which were published in Sandro of Chegem (English 1983) and The Gospel According to Chegem (English 1984), in the 1970s, the complete collection was not published in the original Russian until 1989. The stories’ narrator recounts the adventures of his Uncle Sandro from the early nineteenth century to Stalinist times and contains an enormous cast of characters, with appearances from various historical figures, including Stalin himself. Iskander’s work has plenty of humor, is vividly imagined, and full of creative storytelling.

During the Soviet era, there was some effort to encourage regional literature, though much of it was written in Russian. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, very little new fiction has come out of many of these areas, especially Central Asia, which is still dominated by totalitarian regimes.

Chingiz Aitmatov (1928–2008) was one of the most important writers from what is now Kyrgyzstan. His most ambitious novel, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1981, English 1983), offers an evocative depiction of Kazakh life under Soviet rule. The novel tells the story of an old man traveling to try to give his friend a proper burial. But an odd science fiction story line involving an American and a Soviet cosmonaut surreptitiously making contact with intelligent aliens is less than ideally integrated into the book. Despite the story’s consequences for the central character’s mission and its effective critique of Cold War politics, it makes for a very strange fit. The White Ship (1970, English 1972) ends darkly, with its young protagonist, just a boy, committing suicide, but Aitmatov’s novella compellingly contrasts a very environmentally conscious Central Asian tradition with a harsher Soviet reality.

Russian-born Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978) was exiled to Kazakhstan in the 1930s and wrote wonderful autobiographical novels inspired by his experiences there. The Keeper of Antiquities (1964, English 1969) and Dombrovsky’s magnum opus, The Faculty of Useless Knowledge (1978, English 1995), both featuring an archaeologist named Zybin, are set in Kazakhstan during the Stalinist terror. Dombrovsky expertly uses the locale to accentuate the absurdities of the Soviet system in which the young archaeologist finds himself a pawn in a show trial, and his historical expertise helps paint a rich picture of the area. The setting—and Dombrovsky’s sense of humor—give The Faculty of Useless Knowledge a feel very different from that of the other fiction covering the same period but set in Moscow or from the later Gulag fiction.

Andrei Volos (b. 1955) was born and raised in Tajikistan but left after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Hurramabad (2000, English 2001), he describes the fate of several ethnic Russians with strong ties to Tajikistan who are ultimately robbed of their last illusions, their hopes of being able to continue living in their homeland as before, which are dashed as the pent-up resentment against all Russians boiled over in Tajikistan in the early 1990s. The English edition of the novel, which contains only half the original stories, graphically documents the country’s resurgent nationalism and tribalism as well as everyday life as Tajikistan made its very rough transition to becoming an independent nation-state in the 1990s.

Hamid Ismailov (b. 1954), an Uzbek author born in Kyrgyzstan, has lived in exile in Britain since the 1990s; his work is still banned in Uzbekistan. Several of his novels have been translated from Russian, notably The Railway (1997, English 2006), set in Gilas, a fictional town and crossroad, and The Dead Lake (2011, English 2014), a novel about the fallout of the Soviets’ nuclear tests on the steppes of Kazakhstan. The novel of most immediate interest to American audiences is Ismailov’s A Poet and Bin-Laden (2005, English 2012), which chronicles the radicalization of an Uzbek poet, Belgi, in the wake of the attacks on September 11.

Despite being forced to adopt a Mongolian name, Galsan Tschinag (b. 1943) is in fact Tuvan—and, having studied in Leipzig, writes mainly in German. His novel The Blue Sky (1994, English 2006)—the first in an autobiographical cycle—is the first of his books to be translated into English, and it offers a good, if incomplete, introduction to his work. Describing his boyhood during a time when Soviet collectivization threatened traditionally nomadic Tuvan life, Tschinag impresses with his ability to convey this harsh natural world and the relationship of the characters to it.

G. Mend-Ooyo’s (b. 1952) poetic Golden Hill (1999, English 2007), another autobiographical work steeped in the Mongolian countryside and lore, is the rare work of fiction actually translated from Mongolian. Difficult to place in any familiar literary tradition, its appeal is largely as a piece of exotica.