The Chukchi Bible

(Paperback)

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The stories compose both a moving history of the Chukchi people who inhabit the shores of the Bering Sea and a beautiful cautionary tale, rife with conflict, human drama and humour. Introduces fantastic characters: Nau, the mother of the human race; Rau, her half-whale husband; and finally, the dark spirit Armagirgin, who attempts to destroy nature's harmony by pitting the two against each other. The Chukchi Bible moves through Arctic tundra, sea, sky and beyond, introducing readers to an extraordinary mythology and resilient people, in hauntingly poetic prose.

Reviews

A last, ringing testament to Rytkheu's people: a reworking of their myths, their history, and his own ancestry, in a poetic act of reclamation. . . Rich in the texture and detail of past lives. The New York Review of Books

Breathtaking, wild, and imaginative . . . so clear, surefooted, vivid and confident . . . They describe the marking of the seasons the breaking ice, changing light, frost and drift . . . the training of shamans; the passing on of rituals and healing skills. The Los Angeles Times

An extended epitaph inscribed on the tombstone of a small nationality. . . . [with] an indigenous genesis myth, a fall from grace and fratricide legends, a Chukchi Deuteronomy, and a prophet-like figure. . . . [with] a heightened sense of nostalgia and . . . the full range of Rytkheu's style, from the lyrical prose of his myths and legends to the down-to-earth idiom of European whalers and merchants. World Literature Today

This story by Yuri Rytkheu is a love song to human survival, both physical and metaphysical, a true story about change and endurance, about the Essential way to live in the world, about the eternal story while recounting the fleeting one. Gioia Timpanelli

Yuri writes with passion, strength, and beauty of a world we others have never understood. A splendid book. Farley Mowat

Author Bio

Yuri Rytkheu 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. His novel 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 translated Rytkheu's novel A Dream in Polar Fog. Born in the former Soviet Union, she now lives in London with her husband and daughter.