The Last Quarter of the Moon - A Novel

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.
In Bruce Humes’s illuminating translation, acclaimed author Chi Zijian renders an Evenki experience of interdependence and reciprocity with the natural world, where 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, Zijian depicts lives that resist the march of modernization, speaking profoundly to the real endangerment of Indigenous communities and knowledge across the world. 

About the author

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. Her other work includes Manchuria; A Clouded Light; 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 by Wei Hui and other works. He is an American literary translator and critic of Chinese literature, specializing in non-Han Chinese authors. He is currently translating Hollowed Out by Liu Liangcheng. Since 2009 he has published the blog Ethnic ChinaLit. Humes speaks several languages and is studying Turkish. He lives in Tainan, Taiwan.

Summary

The North American debut of one of China’s most celebrated authors, “Chi Zijian’s beautifully realised novel offers a detailed portrait of a way of life hard to imagine today” (The Independent).

At the end of the twentieth century, an intergenerational Indigenous family of the Evenki tribe living deep in the forested mountains of China’s eastern edge encounters existential change. An elder spins the daily tales of community drama against the fray of Chinese, Japanese, and Russian nation-building and resource extraction. As our narrator’s world is forced to the margins of empire and industrialization, her abiding and tender attention to her people’s core relationships—human, animal, spiritual, environmental—becomes itself an act of resistance.

In Bruce Humes’s inspired translation, acclaimed author Chi Zijian gives us an unabashedly intimate account of how an entire culture can be pushed to the vanishing point over the course of one lifetime. Through distinctive pace and slowness, the book renders an Evenki experience of interdependence and reciprocity with the natural world, where wilderness is infused with domestic life and spiritual intervention. From reindeer herding and ice fishing, to Shamanic songs and rites, to tallies of marriages, births, and deaths, this nomadic clan contends with preserving traditions and legacy alongside the threat of progress and displacement.

This essential addition to the Seedbank series shows real lives that don’t conform to the march of modernization, speaking profoundly to real endangerment of Indigenous communities and knowledge across the world. “When I look again at the fawn that is nearer and nearer to us, it feels as if the pale-white crescent has fallen to the ground,” our narrator concludes. “I’m crying, because I can no longer distinguish between heaven and earth.”

This epic, internationally recognized work humbly challenges us to see that all is shared and interconnected—joy and loss, creatures and peoples, the material and the magical.

Foreword

• Physical galley quantities available for the PGW sales force, major media, poetry media, translation media, environmental media, booksellers and librarians; digital galleys available for download on Edelweiss
  
• Galley campaign to influential Chinese, Asian-American, and Indigenous authors, writers, and reviewers
• National media publicity campaign as well as planned outreach to translation outlets and outlets with special interest in indigenous and Chinese culture
• Advertising with World Literature Today, the Asian American Writing Workshop and the American Literary Translators Association
• Promotional partnership with CALIBA and NAIBA with targeted advertising and promotions to New York City and California/Los Angeles booksellers and readers
• Digital marketing through the publisher to communities of more than 40K readers and buyers, with special push to academic market for course adoption
• Targeted Academic outreach
• Title and series Reader’s Guides available for download
• Digital marketing through the publisher to promote the Seedbank series

Product details

• Authors: Chi Zijian, Zijian Chi
• Assisted by: Bruce Humes (Translation), Humes Bruce (Translation)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 14.07.2026
• EAN: 9781571311474
• ISBN: 978-1-57131-147-4
• No. of pages: 384
• Illustrations: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Series: Seedbank
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Fiction: general and literary, FICTION / Indigenous, Relating to Native American people, FICTION / Nature & the Environment, FICTION / World Literature / China / General