"It was the wife of the oldest Yesen son who let out a long, deep sigh into the dark, 'There are too many hardships in this world.'"

A Village Family is Kazakh writer Yerkex Hurmanbek's latest short-story collection.

Yerkex hails from the Baitag Bogd Mountains on the border between Mongolia and China. Since leaving behind the yurt when young to explore the world beyond the pastures, this Kazakh shepherdess has used literature to return to her birthplace. In this book, she rediscovers it through the eyes of a child: she writes about the ordinary people in her childhood village, about the wild canola flowers on "General's Desert", about drawings on rockfaces, about the bride "you can't really call pretty", and about the herders who season by season, year after year, generation upon generation, up stakes and migrate where the water and grass dictates in their tract of earth. There, they survive, multiply, love, and die. Loss brings frustration and helplessness, as well as undeniable hope and ambition.

About the author

Yerkex Hurmanbek is a Kazakh writer and translator. She was born in 1961 on the pastures of the Baitag Bogd Mountains. Her works include the prose essay collections Eternal Lamb, Grassland Mother of Fire, Wolf in Blue Light, and Leaving the Harsh Cold; the short story collections, Irtysh River Ditty, Return of the Black Horse, and The Day Turns to Night; the screenplay, Eternal Lamb, adapted from the essay of the same name, and the dance poem epic, Tree of Life. Her works have been translated into English, French, Arabic, and other languages.