Kuraj

December 19, 2005
Based on a true story, Di Natale's expansive debut chronicles the journey of Naja, a Mongol girl taken from the Central Asian steppes to Cologne, Germany, during WWII. This absorbing if not entirely coherent novel encompasses the far-flung war story that precedes the young heroine's relocation, the details of her alienation in Europe and the cultural history of her nomadic people. When her birth father, Ul'an, a Tunshan khan, joins the Germans in protest of Stalin's collectivization, he meets Lt. Günther Berger, with whom he lays siege to Stalingrad as part of the Turkestan battalion. After the Russians capture and imprison the two men, they escape and return to the steppes, only for Ul'an to die. At Ul'an's behest, Günther adopts the 10-year-old Naja, and with his wife, Siglinde, raises her in his bourgeois German postwar household. As the novel—titled after Naja's native word for tumbleweed—shifts points of view, time and place, it follows her to middle age, when she comes to familial terms with her adoptive parents and her past. The plot line is original and the writing lyrical, but the number of shifts involved in Naja's journey back to her own identity will leave less diligent readers behind.

December 1, 2005
In a story that moves from the steppes of central Asia to post -World War II Cologne, first-time novelist di Natale transforms the true-life experiences of her eight-year-old heroine, Naja, into a fascinating novel about immigration, dislocation, and, finally, self-acceptance. Just before the war, Naja is born to a tribe of Mongol nomads descended from Genghis Khan. Her father volunteers to fight with the Germans because his tribe has been oppressed by Stalin's forced collectivization of indigenous peoples. He is captured and escapes with a German friend, who adopts Naja after her father's death. Totally cut off from her language and customs, the little girl eventually adapts to her new home even though her physical features and beliefs mark her forever as an outsider. Di Natale intercuts the narrative with the myths and history of the nomads; vivid, albeit painful descriptions of the Battle of Stalingrad; and the experiences of German POWs in the Soviet Union. Recommended for larger public libraries." -Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS"

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