Yuri Rytkheu was born 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. A Dream in Polar
Fog was a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize Notable Book in 2006. In the
late 1950s, Rytkheu emerged not only as a great literary talent,
but as the unique voice of a small national minority - the Chukchi
people, a shrinking community residing in one of the most majestic
and inhospitable environments on earth.
Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse translated Rytkheu's novel The Chukchi
Bible. Born in the former Soviet Union, she now lives in London
with her husband and daughter.
Kiriyama Prize Notable Book For 2006 Thousands of books have been
written about the Arctic aborigines by intruders from the south.
Yuri Rytkheu has turned the skin inside out and written about the
way the Arctic people view outsiders. A Chukchi him- self, Yuri
writes with passion, strength, and beauty of a world we others have
never understood. A splendid book. --Farley Mowat Rarely has
humanity's relationship to nature been so beautifully and vividly
depicted . . . It recalls, in both substance and style, the best
work of Jack London and Herman Melville, and it is a novel in the
grandest sense of the word. --Neal Pollack
A hypnotic, shimmering new novel. . . . One emerges from the novel
and its sudden, jarring, most unusual but spot-on ending dazed,
dazzled, snow-blind. --The San Diego Union Tribune A Dream in Polar
Fog gave me the same haunting and powerful reading experience as
did Melville's travel fictions. Yuri Rytkheu is a world-class
writer. Part lyrical ethnography, part uncanny adventure movie,
part historical saga, part spectral tone poem, this novel
miraculously brings Siberia to the center of our lives. --Howard
Norman
Kiriyama Prize Notable Book For 2006
Thousands of books have been written about the Arctic aborigines
by intruders from the south. Yuri Rytkheu has turned the skin
inside out and written about the way the Arctic people view
outsiders. A Chukchi him- self, Yuri writes with passion, strength,
and beauty of a world we others have never understood. A splendid
book. --Farley Mowat Rarely has humanity's relationship to
nature been so beautifully and vividly depicted . . . It recalls,
in both substance and style, the best work of Jack London and
Herman Melville, and it is a novel in the grandest sense of the
word. --Neal Pollack
A hypnotic, shimmering new novel. . . . One emerges from the novel
and its sudden, jarring, most unusual but spot-on ending dazed,
dazzled, snow-blind. --The San Diego Union Tribune A Dream in Polar
Fog gave me the same haunting and powerful reading experience as
did Melville's travel fictions. Yuri Rytkheu is a world-class
writer. Part lyrical ethnography, part uncanny adventure movie,
part historical saga, part spectral tone poem, this novel
miraculously brings Siberia to the center of our lives. --Howard
Norman
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