Mongolian literature in translation. Meeting with two contemporary authors and their translator
Gün G. Ayurzana is a Mongolian poet, novelist and literary translator born in 1970 in the central province of Bayankhongor. From 1988 to 1994, he studied at the Maxim-Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow, Russia. He then worked as a journalist before devoting himself fully to writing. In 2003, he published his first novel, L'Illusion, followed in 2004 by his first collection of poems, Poèmes enfantins. Today, he is the author of a body of work that includes a dozen novels and as many collections of poetry. In 2007, he participated in the International Creative Writing Program at the University of Iowa, USA. Since 1995, he has been married to Ulziitugs, a famous Mongolian writer. They have three children.
The Legend of the Shaman (Jentayu, 2024)
Tengis, a young Mongolian who has just experienced a painful heartbreak, learns from a friend of the sudden reappearance of the greatest spirit of Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal, in neighboring Siberia. He decided to leave Mongolia and go and see for himself. While there, he meets Khagdai, an old Buryat shaman who seems to read his every thought, and Regina, a Canadian who regularly visits the island to write a book about shamans. Uncertain about his future and troubled by the spiritual power of the place, Tengis agrees to become the shaman's assistant and begins to penetrate the secrets of the spirit world.
Born in 1972 in the Mongolian town of Darkhan, Luvsandorj Ulziitugs began her career as a journalist with the official newspaper Ardii Erkh and the magazine Uchigdur. She went on to edit over a hundred publications of literary works and art books, including three anthologies of Mongolian literature. She is the author of eight collections of poems and four books of short stories.
Night Shards. 100 poems from the life of a woman (Borealia, 2022)
"I was born to put down on paper the words of snow, trees, stars. I came to awaken, to sing a timeless tune, infinite, eternal. When the wandering moon draws the contours of my shadow... There, I will be born a second time, falling from the sky into the abyss of night." 100 poems by Ulziitugs that have the flavor of a novel, that of a woman's destiny. Written in an original prose between dream and memory, the words that flow from Ulziitugs' pen have an unsettling sincerity as they sketch the life of a woman, child, mother and then lover, who resists her destiny and sublimates her darkest feelings by turning to the elements of nature, luminous and eternal.
Aquarium. Short stories from today's Mongolia (Borealia, 2017)
With a pen full of poetry and delicacy, Mongolian poet Ulziitugs offers us 13 city-dwelling short stories about women. With an economy of words sometimes pushed to the extreme, these disturbingly sincere texts speak of love, death, family and friendship with astonishing fluidity. By taking us into her gentle, contemplative universe, the author makes us face up to the duality of life and questions our relationship with others and the necessary sublimation of desires.
Translator of the works of Gün G. Ayurzana and L. Ulziitugs, Renchin Munkhzul was born in Ulaanbaatar and now lives between France and Mongolia.
Awarded in 2016 by the Mongolian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she simultaneously received the Woman of the Year prize awarded by the Association for the Promotion of Mongolian Women in Europe. An ambassador of Mongolian culture, in 2021 she was awarded the Polar Star, a high distinction of the Mongolian state.
