The North American debut of one of China’s most celebrated authors, “Chi Zijian’s beautifully realised novel offers a detailed portrait of a way of life hard to imagine today” (The Independent).
At the end of the twentieth century, an intergenerational Indigenous family of the Evenki tribe living deep in the forested mountains of China’s eastern edge encounters existential change. An elder spins the daily tales of community drama against the fray of Chinese, Japanese, and Russian nation-building and resource extraction. As our narrator’s world is forced to the margins of empire and industrialization, her abiding and tender attention to her people’s core relationships—human, animal, spiritual, environmental—becomes itself an act of resistance.
In Bruce Humes’s inspired translation, acclaimed author Chi Zijian gives us an unabashedly intimate account of how an entire culture can be pushed to the vanishing point over the course of one lifetime. Through distinctive pace and slowness, the book renders an Evenki experience of interdependence and reciprocity with the natural world, where wilderness is infused with domestic life and spiritual intervention. From reindeer herding and ice fishing, to Shamanic songs and rites, to tallies of marriages, births, and deaths, this nomadic clan contends with preserving traditions and legacy alongside the threat of progress and displacement.
This essential addition to the Seedbank series shows real lives that don’t conform to the march of modernization, speaking profoundly to real endangerment of Indigenous communities and knowledge across the world. “When I look again at the fawn that is nearer and nearer to us, it feels as if the pale-white crescent has fallen to the ground,” our narrator concludes. “I’m crying, because I can no longer distinguish between heaven and earth.”
This epic, internationally recognized work humbly challenges us to see that all is shared and interconnected—joy and loss, creatures and peoples, the material and the magical.
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 9781571311474
Number of pages: 384
Dimensions: 215 x 139 mm
Praise for The Last Quarter of the Moon“Chi has an extraordinary gift for storytelling and her steely narrator is a true heroine, surviving war and encroaching modernity. Simply magnificent.”—The Times (UK)“The Last Quarter of the Moon is about a life, and a lifestyle, as distant from ours as you can imagine; and entirely different from what English-readers might have come to expect of a Chinese novel. But the story is masterfully told, with simplicity and empathy, in a direct and credible voice that not only feels unlike a translation, but unlike a fiction at all.”—The Independent on Sunday“Chi Zijian's beautifully realised novel offers a detailed portrait of a way of life hard to imagine today... The natural beauty that surrounds the Evenki people is celebrated in lyrical prose while the harsher side of mountain life – disease, famine, hungry animals and sudden storms – is described in a matter-of-fact tone... Bruce Humes's skilful translation is pitch-perfect.”–The Independent“Chi Zijian's insight into the life of the Evenki tribe is truly remarkable. The reader not only learns much about a shamanistic culture and the rituals surrounding birth, marriage and death but also how to hunt bear and to live with the reindeer.”—The Book TrustPraise for the Seedbank Series“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“Through its cultural-linguistic contribution to narrative diversity, Milkweed's Seedbank series is a vital tool in imagining the futures possible for humanity beyond the anthropocene. Bringing works from Greek, K'iche', German, Russian (and more!) whose authors are deeply rooted in their homelands, each voice encountered has resonated with me on a seemingly cellular level—shifting and changing both who I am and can be. I will continue to press these books into the hands of compassionate readers and cannot wait to share the forthcoming titles in the project!”—Erin Pineda, 27th Letter Books“Milkweed as a publishing house has long been championing literary works both fictitious and true to life centered around culture, nature, and environmentalism. The Seedbank series serves as both a marvelous introduction to the books Milkweed provides and as a collection of essential stories that ought to be on everyone's radar. The words behind these front covers highlight life-changing experiences, knowledge, and ways of life from communities that are seldom otherwise heard from in the publishing world through an authentic cultural lens. What I've read from the Seedbank line is phenomenal, and I look forward to spending time with future works in the series.”—Andrew King, Secret Garden Books
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