In the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, a young shepherd boy comes of age, tending his family’s flocks on the mountain steppes. Under the influence of the Soviet Union, nomadic traditions confront a modernization that is at once devastating and alluring.

GALSAN TSCHINAG, whose name in his native Tuvan language is Irgit Schynykbajoglu Dshurukuwaa, was born in 1944 in Mongolia. He studied at the University of Leipzig, where he adopted German as his written language. Under an oppressive Communist regime he became a singer, storyteller, and poet in the ancient Tuvan tradition. As the chief of Tuvans in Mongolia, Tschinag led his people, scattered under Communist rule, back in a huge caravan to their original home in the high Altai Mountains. Tschinag is the author of more than thirty books, and his work has been translated into many languages. He lives alternately in the Altai, Ulaanbaatar, and Europe.