At the end of the twentieth-century an old woman sits among the birch trees and thinks back over her life, her loves, and the joys and tragedies that have befallen her family and her people. She is a member of the Evenki tribe who wander the remote forests of north-eastern China with their herds of reindeer, living in close sympathy with nature at its most beautiful and cruel. #145;On the day mother gave birth to me, father killed a black bear.#146; An idyllic childhood playing with the hunting dogs, fishing in the river and listening to the clan#146;s legends, ends with her father#146;s death and the growing realisation that her mother#146;s and uncle#146;s relationship is not as simple as she thought. Then, in the 1930s, the intimate, secluded world of the tribe is shattered when the Japanese army invades China. The Evenki cannot avoid being pulled into the brutal conflict which marks the first step towards the end of their isolation. #145;I am the wife of our people's last Clan Chieftain. #145; As the century unravels, Russian, Japanese and Han Chinese intruders, bringing war and revolution, all make their mark.

Finally the day comes when the government instructs the tribe to move down from the mountains to the cities, to fence their reindeer into pens and to begin a civilised life.Watching her grandchildren gather their belongings, the woman must decide whether to leave the snows and trees for the last time. #145;I lift my head and gaze at the moon, and it looks like a snow-white fawn running towards us.#146; In The Last Quarter of the Moon , prize-winning novelist Chi Zijian, creates a dazzling epic about an extraordinary woman bearing witness not just to the stories of her fellow tribespeople, full of wonder and pain, but also to the effects of the transformation of China on a hidden corner of that vast country.