Chi Zijian’s The Last Quarter of the Moon is a novel of uncommon grace and quiet profundity, an elegy to a vanishing world and a people whose lives were once defined by movement, faith, and the rhythms of nature. Set among the Evenki, a nomadic reindeer-herding people of China’s far northeastern borderlands, the novel unfolds through the reminiscences of an elderly woman who serves as both its narrator and moral center. Through her calm, reflective voice, Chi Zijian transforms a seemingly remote and unfamiliar culture into a mirror for universal human experience. The result is a deeply affecting meditation on memory, belonging, and the inevitability of change.
At its surface, the novel traces the slow disintegration of the Evenki way of life under the pressures of modernity, political upheaval, and environmental transformation. The narrator recounts her life from childhood to old age, spanning nearly a century of historical change from the Japanese occupation of Manchuria to the rise of the Communist state and the forced resettlement of her people into fixed settlements. Yet Chi’s achievement lies in her ability to make these vast historical movements feel intimate and embodied. The story does not progress through grand political events or external conflicts but through the textures of daily existence: the care of reindeer, the rituals of the hunt, the telling of ancestral tales, and the quiet endurance of loss. In these small details, the epic dimension of the novel is revealed.
Chi’s prose, rendered with remarkable sensitivity by translator Bruce Humes, possesses a clarity and rhythm that evoke both the cadences of oral storytelling and the serenity of poetry. Her sentences move with the calm inevitability of snowfall, accumulating emotional power through repetition and restraint. The Evenki speak little, and so does the narrator. Her language is measured and unhurried. Yet beneath this surface calm lies a deep current of melancholy. The old woman’s voice is filled with tenderness and sorrow, but also with a stoic acceptance that gives the novel its quiet strength. Through her, Chi captures the paradox of memory: its power to preserve and its power to wound.
The natural world is at the heart of the novel’s beauty and its tragedy. The forests of Heilongjiang, with their snow-laden branches, frozen rivers, and vast stretches of silence, are not merely a setting but a living presence. For the Evenki, nature is neither hostile nor romanticized; it is the foundation of their existence and the measure of their morality. The forest is a place of order, where every creature has its purpose and every action carries consequence. Chi writes with the precision of a naturalist, but also with the reverence of a poet. When the Evenki are forced to abandon their migratory life and settle in government-built villages, it is not only their livelihood that is destroyed but also their spiritual equilibrium. The loss of the forest becomes a loss of self.
Throughout the novel, the moon serves as a recurring image of transformation and decline. Its phases mark the passage of time, but also the cyclical nature of existence. The title, The Last Quarter of the Moon, suggests the waning of light, the approach of darkness, and the humility of acceptance. The narrator, speaking in the twilight of her years, embodies this final phase. Her recollections are not lamentations but offerings, each story a small flame held against the vastness of oblivion. The moon’s diminishing glow reflects both the fading of her people’s culture and the persistence of their memory.
Chi’s treatment of history is subtle and humane. The Japanese invasion, the Nationalist retreat, and the Communist revolution all pass through the novel like distant storms, reshaping lives without ever fully entering the personal sphere. The narrator’s world is governed less by ideology than by necessity and survival. When collectivization arrives, bringing the Evenki into fixed settlements and stripping them of their reindeer herds, the change is experienced not as a political act but as a spiritual dislocation. The narrator accepts these transformations with the same stoic patience she brings to every loss in her life. Her endurance, however, is not passive. It is an act of resistance grounded in dignity, an insistence on preserving meaning even when all external signs of her culture have disappeared.
One of the novel’s most striking qualities is its moral clarity. Chi does not romanticize the Evenki, nor does she portray them as victims of modernity. Instead, she presents them as fully realized human beings, capable of cruelty and compassion, superstition and wisdom. The narrator herself is no saint; she has moments of jealousy, bitterness, and fear. Yet through her, Chi conveys an ethic of humility and balance that stands in quiet contrast to the arrogance of progress. The novel’s power comes from this moral equilibrium, its refusal to simplify the world into binaries of good and evil, past and present, civilization and wilderness.
Bruce Humes’s translation deserves particular praise. He captures the cadenced simplicity of Chi’s prose without reducing its subtlety. The English text retains the musicality and stillness of the original Chinese, allowing the reader to experience the novel’s meditative pace. The translation also preserves the cultural specificity of the Evenki world, incorporating indigenous terms and rituals without excessive exposition. Humes trusts the reader to inhabit this unfamiliar space and to find its meanings through immersion rather than explanation.
In its structure, The Last Quarter of the Moon resembles an oral epic more than a modern novel. Its chapters unfold as self-contained stories, linked by the narrator’s voice and the slow passage of time. There is no conventional plot or climax, only the gradual accumulation of memory. This form mirrors the way traditional cultures transmit knowledge, through repetition, variation, and the continuity of voice. The novel’s rhythm encourages contemplation rather than suspense. Readers are invited to listen, not to anticipate, to dwell in the stillness between events rather than rush toward resolution. In an age defined by noise and speed, this narrative patience feels radical.
What lingers after reading is not merely the sorrow of loss, but the serenity of acceptance. The novel ends not in despair, but in reconciliation. The old woman, now alone and nearly blind, remains in the forest even as her people have departed. She listens to the wind in the trees, the distant cries of the reindeer, and the rustle of snow underfoot. In this final solitude, she embodies a kind of grace that transcends time and circumstance. Chi Zijian’s vision is profoundly ecological, rooted in the understanding that human existence is inseparable from the world it inhabits. Her protagonist’s endurance is not heroic in the conventional sense, but it is sacred in its humility.
The Last Quarter of the Moon stands as one of the most moving works of contemporary Chinese literature. It bridges ethnography and fiction, myth and history, poetry and testimony. Chi’s prose carries the precision of documentary and the resonance of legend, creating a portrait of a culture on the brink of extinction that feels both specific and universal. For readers accustomed to the urban settings and political allegories of modern Chinese fiction, this novel offers something different: a quiet, spiritual narrative rooted in the rhythms of the natural world and the persistence of memory.
To read The Last Quarter of the Moon is to be reminded of literature’s power to preserve what history erases. It is an act of listening to a voice nearly lost, to a landscape nearly forgotten, and to the enduring song of human resilience. In the pale light of Chi Zijian’s moon, one sees not only the end of a way of life, but also the beauty of its passing.