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).