走进中国少数民族丛书·蒙古族 (lit., Up Close with the Mongols) the latest volume in a series of 
Chinese-language books that will eventually profile each of China’s 55 officially designated minority ethnicities, has been launched. It is published by Liaoning Ethnic Publishing House. To date, 8 books featuring peoples of northeast China are out: Daur, Evenki, Hezhen, Korean (Chaoxian), Manchu, Mongols, Oroqen, and Xibe.
An exhibition showcasing the lifestyle of the Oroqen (鄂伦春) has opened at the new Huma Museum (呼玛博物馆) in Heilongjiang’s Greater Khingan Mountains (大兴安岭). The Oroqen are a Tungusic-speaking people closely related to the reindeer-herding Evenki (鄂温克) who figure in Chi Zijian’s Last Quarter of the Moon. Displays feature the Oroqen’s mobile housing, known to the Han as 撮罗子 (similar to teepee of native North Americans), hunting, dancing and Shamanism.
1944, a ballad sung by Jamala evoking the deportation of Crimean Tatars by Josef Stalin, has won the 2016 Eurovision song contest for Ukraine (Politically Charged). Inevitably, the song’s lyrics are interpreted as a criticism of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 via Putin’s “Little Green Men.” The Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the Crimean Khanate, an Ottoman vassal state, during the 15th to 18th centuries. Tatar is a Turkic language, classified as a member of the West Kipchak branch.
Madonna in a Fur Coat (Kürk Mantolu Madonna) by the 20th-century Turkish author Sabahattin Ali has just been published in English by Penguin. Translated by Maureen Freely, the novel centers on a post-World War I love affair between Turkish student Raif Efendi and a German singer, Maria 
Puder, in Berlin. The Turkish edition has sold 750,000 copies “in the last three years alone,” according to one article (Glorious Comeback). It appears that the Chinese edition (I think this is the same novel) appeared way before Penguin got around to it, however, as 穿皮大衣的玛利亚 was out back in 1984. At any rate, the Turkish have a curious way of showing appreciation for their authors — the article also notes that the “left-wing poet, writer and journalist was a fierce critic of the government during the early years of the Turkish Republic. He was imprisoned at least twice and was killed in 1948 by an unknown assailant in a murder widely attributed to Turkey’s secret service.”
Ethnic ChinaLit 