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Praise for Yuri Rytkheu Arguably the foremost writer to emerge from the minority peoples of Russia's far north. --New York Review of Books We have so little intimate information about these Arctic people, and the writer's deep emotional attachment to this landscape of ice (today melting away under global warming forces) makes every sentence seem a poetic revelation. --Annie Proulx Rytkheu immerses his readers in the fantastical landscapes of the Arctic circle, and does so without breaking a sweat. . . . His elegant, unforced descriptive writing can whip us across leagues of tundra and thread the jagged icebergs studding hyperborean seas, but when the blizzards hit and the characters are trapped in their huts, we're snowbound there with them under the whale-oil lamp, chewing walrus and hoping for respite. --Bookslut Thousands of books have been written about the Arctic aborigines by intruders from the south. Rytkheu has turned the skin inside out and written about the way the Arctic people view outsiders. A Chukchi himself, [he] writes with passion, strength, and beauty of a world we others have never understood. --Farley Mowat

"Praise for When the Whales Leave ""Milkweed's Seedbank series is one of the most exciting and visionary projects in contemporary publishing. Taking the long view, these volumes run parallel to the much-hyped books of the moment to demonstrate the possibility and hope inherent in all great literature."" —Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books ""This worthy fable offers profound considerations about stewardship of and people's relationships to the natural world."" —Publishers Weekly “We have so little intimate information about these Arctic people, and the writer’s deep emotional attachment to this landscape of ice (today melting away under global warming forces) makes every sentence seem a poetic revelation.”—Annie Proulx ""When the Whales Leave is a gorgeous meditation on the magic of the natural world and why we need to preserve it."" —BuzzFeed, ""13 Must-Read Fantasy Books""  ""Yuri Rytkheu comes from a Uelen Settlement of the Chukotsk National Territory in Siberia and carries with his work the voice of that vast and majestic landscape . . . It's sometimes hard to tell a fable from a fact these days, but in this case the fable states truths we shouldn't ignore, like where we descend from and the legacies we leave behind."" —Literary Hub ""The first time I read Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse's translation, from the Russian, of Chukchi author Yuri Rytkheu's When the Whales Leave, it was like falling into a trance. Its language induces a type of hypnosis that compels the reader to read straight through to the end."" —Marina Manoukian, Los Angeles Review of Books ""When the Whales Leave has an epic sensibility, but is also saturated in Arctic detail; the rendering of ice, snow, wind, and water are particularly poetic. English readers are in Chavasse's debt for bringing Rytkheu's world into ours: a slender novel with a wide message, imploring we cease imagining ourselves masters before all our seas become 'bereft of any sign of life.'"" —Orion Magazine ""When the Whales Leave is predominantly a legend about how we see the world; it aims to life a veil and show that spirituality is ever-present, although, admittedly, increasingly difficult to notice . . . Rytkheu invites readers to return to a place of open-mindedness and open-heartedness and see that love, hop and humanity is all around us—exactly where we left it, generations upon generations ago."" —Colorado Review “When the Whales Leave is a mythological manifesto.”—Nicole Yurcaba, Sage Cigarette Magazine —Nancy Lord, former Alaska writer laureate, Anchorage Daily News ""[When the Whales Leave] is an intimate family saga, a fantastical tale of transformations amidst a shifting landscape, and a haunting tale about the divide (or lack thereof) between humanity and the natural world. Everything clicks into place neatly, and the result is a captivating blend of the mythic and the quotidian."" —Words Without Borders ""When the Whales Leave is a story of Great Love come and gone. What we will create in its stead remains to be written."" —Full Stop “Arguably the foremost writer to emerge from the minority peoples of Russia’s far north.”—New York Review of Books “Rytkheu immerses his readers in the fantastical landscapes of the Arctic circle, and does so without breaking a sweat. . . . His elegant, unforced descriptive writing can whip us across leagues of tundra and thread the jagged icebergs studding hyperborean seas, but when the blizzards hit and the characters are trapped in their huts, we’re snowbound there with them under the whale-oil lamp, chewing walrus and hoping for respite.”—Bookslut “When the Whales Leave is a mythological manifesto.”—Nicole Yurcaba, Sage Cigarette Magazine “Thousands of books have been written about the Arctic aborigines by intruders from the south. Rytkheu has turned the skin inside out and written about the way the Arctic people view outsiders. A Chukchi himself, [he] writes with passion, strength, and beauty of a world we others have never understood.”—Farley Mowat"

Author Information

Yuri Rytkheu (1930–2008) was born in Uelen, a village in the Chukotka region of Siberia. He sailed the Bering Sea, worked on Arctic geological expeditions, and hunted in Arctic waters, in addition to writing over a dozen novels and collections of stories. The English translation of his book A Dream in Polar Fog was a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize Notable Book in 2006. In the late 1950s, Rytkheu emerged not only as a great literary talent, but as the unique voice of a small national minority—the Chukchi people, a shrinking community residing in one of the most majestic and inhospitable environments on earth. Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse was born in Belarus and, together with her family, emigrated to the United States in 1989. She has translated the work of Dimitry Bortnikov, Sergey Gandlevsky, and Ilya Brazhnikov. Educated at Vassar College, Oxford University, and University College London, she now lives in London.

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