Book Description
A wonderfully accessible memoir of an inaccessible country: Outer Mongolia.
From the Publisher
After two years of working in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, journalist Louisa Waugh moved to the remote village of Tsengel, in the extreme west of the country. This is the story of the year she spent there, living and working with the people who have made a home in the stark but beautiful landscape. With unflinching honesty, Waugh recounts how she slowly learned to fend for herself in a world where life is dominated by the seasons. The villagers and their culture vividly emerge as she shares her happiness, frustrations, and occasional extreme loneliness and fear. Hearing Birds Fly transports the reader from the end of a long, hard Mongolian winter, through a drought–stricken spring, into a lush summer spent in the mountains with a family of nomads. A warm, totally unsentimental account of life in a world where the act of survival is, in itself, a triumph of the human spirit.
Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia FROM THE PUBLISHER
After two years of working in the Mongol capital, Ulaanbaatar, Louisa Waugh moved to a remote village called Tsengel, which lies in the extreme west of Mongolia. Hearing Birds Fly is her story of the year she spent there, living and working with the Tsengel people who have made a home in this stark but beautiful landscape. Louisa describes with unflinching honesty how she slowly learns to fend for herself in a world where life is dominated by the seasons. The village characters and their culture emerge vividly as she shares her happiness, her frustrations and her occasional extreme loneliness and fear. She transports the reader from the end of a long hard winter, through a drought-stricken spring and into a lush summer that she spends in the mountains beyond Tsengel with a family of nomads. Together they return to the village for the 'short golden season' that is Mongolia's autumn, where Louisa remains until the middle of the following winter. Hearing Birds Fly is a unique and totally unsentimental account of life in a world where the act of survival is in itself a triumph of the human spirit.
SYNOPSIS
A wonderfully accessible memoir of an inaccessible country: Outer Mongolia.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Tsengel is a remote village in the far west of Mongolia, 1000 miles over poor roads from the capital city of Ulan Bator. British journalist Waugh decided to spend a year there teaching English while living in a ger (yurt), eating monotonous basic food, and enduring dust storms, bitter cold, filthy and unhealthy conditions, and loneliness. She befriended Mongols, Tuvans, and Kazakhs and writes sympathetically of their simple, seminomadic lives. A good study of life in contemporary rural Mongolia, the book is also an account of the author's determination to test herself in this most hostile environment. Unfortunately, the text bogs down in Waugh's own considerable but self-induced discomforts. Still, with growing political and tourist interest in this little understood but vast region of central Asia, this book has a niche. For larger public libraries. Harold M. Otness, formerly with Southern Oregon Univ. Lib., Ashland Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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