The Last Quarter of the Moon (Paperback or Softback)

In this sweeping epic, full of love and loss, a woman from one of the last remote reindeer-herding tribes of northeastern China tells the story of her family and the last century of her country’s history.

“A long-time confidante of the rain and snow, I am ninety years old. The rain and snow have weathered me, and I too have weathered them.”

At dawn, an elder sits among the birch trees while the rest of her tribe descend the mountain to permanently inhabit the town at its base. A member of the nomadic Evenki tribe, who traverse the forested mountains of China’s eastern edge with herds of reindeer, she tells the tale of her life to the rain and fire, a life lived in close communion with nature at its most beautiful and cruel. Over the course of the twentieth century, her world is pushed to the margins of empire and industrialization. But holding steadfast against the fray of Chinese, Japanese, and Russian nation-building and resource extraction is the elder’s abiding and tender attention to her people’s core relationships—human, animal, spiritual, environmental—which in itself becomes an act of resistance.

An illuminating translation by Bruce Humes—with an introduction by Diane Wilson, author of The Seed Keeper—The Last Quarter of the Moon renders an Evenki experience of interdependence and reciprocity with the natural world. Wilderness is infused with domestic life and spiritual intervention: reindeer herding and ice fishing, Shamanic songs and rites, and tallies of marriages, births, and deaths. Contending with the preservation of tradition and legacy alongside the threat of progress and displacement, acclaimed author Chi Zijian depicts lives that resist the march of modernization, speaking profoundly to the real endangerment of Indigenous communities and knowledge across the world. 

Winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize, China’s most prestigious literary award, The Last Quarter of the Moon asserts that all is shared and interconnected, humbly challenging us to bear witness to both loss and wonder. 

Chi Zijian received the Mao Dun Literary Award—the highest honor for a novelist in China—for The Last Quarter of the Moon, which has been translated into ten languages. She is known for her writing that touches on the folklore of Northeast China and is the only Chinese writer to have won the prestigious Lu Xun Literary Award three times for outstanding accomplishment in short fiction and novella. Her other work includes Manchuria; Atop the Mountains; and White Snow, Black Raven, and has been translated into many languages. Zijian was born in Mohe, China, in 1964 and splits her time between there and the city of Harbin.

Bruce Humes is the translator of the bestseller Shanghai Baby and now specializes in translating writing by/about China-based Altaic peoples and Silk Road culture. Since 2009 he has hosted the blog Ethnic ChinaLit. He lives in Taiwan and is studying Turkish.

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is the author of The Seed Keeper. She is also the author of a memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, which won a Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the One Minneapolis One Read program, as well as a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, which was awarded the Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Her most recent essay, “Seeds for Seven Generations,” was featured in the anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. Wilson has received a Bush Foundation Fellowship as well as awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the East Central Regional Arts Council. In 2018, she was awarded a 50 Over 50 Award from Pollen/Midwest. Wilson is the executive director for the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people. She is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation, and lives in Shafer, Minnesota.