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When the Whales Leave (Seedbank) Paperback – March 10, 2020
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Nau cannot remember a time when she was not one with the world around her: with the fast breeze, the green grass, the high clouds, and the endless blue sky above the Shingled Spit. But her greatest joy is to visit the sea, where whales gather every morning to gaily spout rainbows.
Then, one day, she finds a man in the mist where a whale should be: Reu, who has taken human form out of his Great Love for her. Together these first humans become parents to two whales, and then to mankind. Even after Reu dies, Nau continues on, sharing her story of brotherhood between the two species. But as these origins grow more distant, the old woman’s tales are subsumed into myth—and her descendants turn increasingly bent on parading their dominance over the natural world.
Buoyantly translated into English for the first time by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse, this new entry in the Seedbank series is at once a vibrant retelling of the origin story of the Chukchi, a timely parable about the destructive power of human ego—and another unforgettable work of fiction from Yuri Rytkheu, “arguably the foremost writer to emerge from the minority peoples of Russia’s far north” (New York Review of Books).
- Print length144 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMilkweed Editions
- Publication dateMarch 10, 2020
- Dimensions5.4 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
- ISBN-101571311319
- ISBN-13978-1571311313
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"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
About the Author
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.
Product details
- Publisher : Milkweed Editions (March 10, 2020)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 144 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1571311319
- ISBN-13 : 978-1571311313
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,273,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,193 in Native American Literature (Books)
- #10,097 in Folklore (Books)
- #55,260 in Literary Fiction (Books)
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In Part One, Nau is a young girl when she sees a majestic whale and falls in love with him. Reu, the whale, also falls in love with Nau. If he doesn’t return to the water ‘before the last ray of the sun is gone’ he must stay on land forever. And that is what he chooses to do. Together they have children—in both whale form and in human form. Nau will always be remembered in her community as the person who joined the land and the sea together.
In Part Two, the villages are tired of old Nau’s outrageous stories of her youth as the wife of a whale and her stories about her whale children. It’s nothing but a myth, they say. Part Three is about the generation of Armagirgin, the grandson of Giru.
With passing generations, change is inevitable as a nation’s heritage becomes more and more distant and people, over time, become masters of the wild. This opens the debate about whether this is a strength or a weakness.
This is an interesting generational tale told in the style of indigenous story-telling. It is gentle and mystical, with themes of heritage, curiosity about distant lands, animal-human relationships, ego, duty, and responsibility. Written 45 years ago, it is still relevant in today’s times. I like the way it is written ‘like a song’ and, in parts, like the ocean’s tidal waves. I like the development of characters, especially Nau, the first voice of warm-hearted wisdom as she influences the men of multiple generations.