Overview

On the eve of his wedding, young Alyoshka pines for an earlier love. Ilne chose to leave the nomadic Nenets community seven years before, moving to the city and taking his heart with her. Under increasing pressure to marry, Alyoshka struggles against the ancient Nenets customs of home and family, unwilling to give up his hope for another life. Meanwhile, other painful transitions shake the foundations of the small camp. Deep in grief, Ilne's father Petko feels he has no role left to play in the community, while Vanu strikes out on a difficult journey to try to soothe his troubled friends. Deep in northern Siberia, minor human tragedies play out against the cold expanse of the tundra. With bursts of lyricism and a Chekhovian eye for human frailty, Anna Nerkagi crafts a multi-voiced drama of lost love and the clash between youthful dreams and the complex ties of home. 'In its rawness, its sense of an impending apocalypse and its heavy religious allegory, Nerkagi's fiction has few parallels in contemporary Russian literature' - New Statesman 'A world-class writer' - Hamid Ismailov, author of 'The Railway'

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9781805333159

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Reviews

""A stunning novel, mesmeric, revelatory, singular."" —Sara Baume, author of Seven Steeples

Author Information

Anna Nerkagi was born in 1951 in the Polar Ural tundra, and she belongs to the Indigenous Nenets community. As a child, she was separated from her parents by the Soviet authorities and sent to a boarding school, and she later studied at Tyumen Technical University. She published her debut novel, Aniko of the Nogo Clan, in 1976, and in 1980 she returned to the Yamal Peninsula and the nomadic way of life. There she started the Tundra School for Nenets Children, where she still works as a teacher, blending traditional and modern forms of education. Nerkagi's work has been translated into five languages, and White Moss was adapted into the first-ever Nenets-language feature film. Irina Sadovina translates literature from Russian and Mari. Her translations and writing appeared in publications like Prototype, Meniscus, Calvert Journal, and ellipse. She received the 2021 Australasian Association of Writing Programs Translation Prize and was a 2021-2022 National Centre for Writing Emerging Translator Mentee.

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