Nau cannot remember a time when she was not one with the world around her. Until one day she encounters another human: Reu, a whale who has changed form out of his Great Love for her. Together these first people become parents to two whales, and then to mankind. Even after Reu dies, Nau continues on, sharing a story of kinship between the two species. But disaster looms as the old woman’s tales are subsumed into myth and her descendants grow disdainful of their origins.

YURI RYTKHEU was born 1930 in Uelen, a village in the Chukotka region of Siberia. He sailed the Bering Sea, worked on Arctic geological expeditions, and hunted in Arctic waters, in addition to writing over a dozen novels and collections of stories. In the late 1950s, Rytkheu emerged not only as a great literary talent but as the unique voice of the Chukchi people, a shrinking community residing in one of the most majestic and inhospitable environments on earth.