“The story that lies behind this novel is as thrilling as the book itself. . . . Tschinag makes it easy for his readers to fall into the beautiful rhythms of the Tuvans’ daily life.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“One of those rare books that even when read in solitude makes you feel as if you’ve just been told a story while surrounded by family and friends in front of a fire . . . A book that celebrates kinship, mirrors history and captures the mountains, valleys and steppes in all their surpassing beauty and brutality.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“In this pristine and concentrated tale of miraculous survival and anguished loss, Tschinag evokes the nurturing warmth of a family within the circular embrace of a yurt as an ancient way of life lived in harmony with nature becomes endangered.”—Booklist

“Book by book, Tschinag is championing his people and preserving their traditions. He gives a whole new meaning to the power contained in the written word.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“With the U.S. debut of The Blue Sky, English readers for the first time have direct access to a memorable native Tuvan voice.”—Bloomsbury Review

“The writing and the translation are both skilled, the book is poetic, touching, and enjoyable. Tschinag succeeds in conveying universal aspects of the human experience, along with the specifics of Tuvan life.”—Straight.com

“With this translation of a novel by Tschinag, a shamanic chieftain of the Tuvans, Anglophone readers now have a first literary glimpse into the nomadic life of the high Altai mountains. Recommended.”—CHOICE

“[The Blue Sky] is filled with small pleasures.”—Publishers Weekly

“Tschinag’s beautiful descriptions of his stark and remote mountain homeland and the emotion he evokes through details about the family’s daily life will make readers eager for the next installments of Tschinag’s tale: The Gray Earth and The White Mountain.”—Library Journal

“The hero may be a simple shepherd boy, but his tale is nothing short of epic. With this novel, a Mongolian shaman has stepped onto the stage of world literature.”—Der Spiegel

“Tschinag’s books have reached well beyond his native Altai mountains, and with good reason. They speak of a true partnership between people and nature, and in a language as clear and stark as the steppes.”—Südwest Presse

“Tschinag describes the strenuous days spent between the herd of sheep and the yurt with both affection and precision, and evokes the stunning landscape in a particularly memorable way, all if contributing to the unlikely sense one has as a reader that we are remembering our own childhood.”—Die Welt

“This is a landscape we might never have known—a line of snow-white yurts stretching across the steppes, the dark and frozen ground of the winter camps, the disappearing glaciers, the flocks and herds. The ground beneath this novel slips under your feet even as you read; a landscape threatened by global warming and other environmental degradations; a way of life disappearing faster than you can turn the pages—yak cheese, mutton and dried juniper. A language fighting for its life.”—Los Angeles Times