The Chukchi Bible

by Yuri Rytkheu

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

By the celebrated author of A Dream in Polar Fog, a collection of the myths and stories of Yuri Rytkheu’s own family that is at once a moving history of the Chukchi people who inhabit the northern shores of the Bering Sea and a beautiful cautionary tale rife with conflict, human drama, and humor. We meet fantastic characters: Nau, the mother of the human race; Rau, her half-whale husband; and Rytkheu’s own grandfather, fated to be an intrepid traveler, far-ranging whaler, living ethnographic exhibit, and the last shaman of Uelen. The Chukchi Bible moves through vast Arctic tundra, sea, and sky – and to places deep within ourselves—introducing readers, in vivid prose, to an extraordinary mythology and a resilient people.

Release date: August 7, 2011

Publisher: Archipelago

Print pages: 354

Sample

The Creation of Earth, Sky, Waters, and Men

A Raven, flying over an expanse. From time to time he slowed his flight and scattered his droppings. Wherever solid matter fell, a land mass appeared; wherever liquid fell became rivers and lakes, puddles and rivulets. Some- times First Bird’s excrements mingled together, and this created the tundra marshes. The hardest of the Raven’s droppings served as the building blocks for scree slopes, mountains, and craggy cliffs.

Yet the world created from the stomach and bladder of the First Bird was still immersed in utter darkness. It was then that the Raven called upon his helper-birds and sent them to the east, to peck an opening for the sun’s rays in the hard, dark vault of the sky. The eagle was the first to go. The heavy swoosh of his wings echoed long in the distance. He returned, exhausted, with drooping wings and a beak crooked from pecking, but he had failed. Next the Raven sent a puffin – though he is small, his beak is sturdy and sharp. But the puffin too returned beaten. The seagulls, cormorants, sandpipers, guillemots, geese, and slug- gish eider ducks all tried, but in vain.