The Gods of the Middle World

“The Gods of the Middle World” tells the story of Sima, a student of archaeology for whom the old lore and ways of the Central Asian steppe peoples are as vivid as the present. When she joints a group of archaeologists in southern Kazakhstan, asking all the time whether it is really possible to ‘commune with the spirits’, she soon discovers the answer first hand, setting in motion events in the spirit world that have been frozen for centuries. Meanwhile three millennia earlier, on the same spot, a young woman and her companion struggle to survive and amend wrongs that have caused the neighbouring tribe to take revenge. The two narratives mirror one another, and Sima’s destiny is to resolve the ancient wrongs in her own lifetime and so restore the proper balance of the forces of good and evil. Drawing richly on the historical and mythical backgrounds of the southern Kazakh steppe and of ancient Tibet, the novel ultimately champions human love and compassion over rigid predestination and is a call to each of us to listen for the unique spirit that guides us. With a lifetime of first-hand knowledge of the region in which the story is set, Galina Dolgaya has published a number of novels and poems in Russian.