WHITE DEER ON A BLUE MOUNTAIN
WHITE DEER ON A BLUE MOUNTAIN (Zanger Tauza — Ak Bolan), a novel. Written in 1980 by N.S.Musin. The work is a trilogy, also consisting of the novels Before the Flood (1985), and Get out on the Road at Dawn (1988), the general outline of which is combined with the narrations of the fate of the inhabitants of the mountainforest regions of Bashkortostan in the war and postwar years. The plot of the novel is a description of the selfless and heroic workers of the forestry department of the village of Syuaktash. These prepare turpentine from the resin of local coniferous trees and send it to the front. For the people working in the most difficult conditions, the symbol of a white deer jumping over the Blue Mountain becomes a symbol of happiness. The novel carries various heroic romantic orientations in which the fate of the Motherland and the individual person are merged together. The themes of war and peace, happiness and grief, and life and death clearly express the ideological content of the work which is the search for the meaning of people’s life on earth.
For the novel in its Russian language version, the author was awarded the Salavat Yulayev State Prize of the Republic of Bashkortostan (1991). Literary translation into Russian was done by A.Zhirov.
