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    Tea of Ulaanbaatar
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    Tea of Ulaanbaatar
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    Tea of Ulaanbaatar
    Ebook203 pages3 hours

    Tea of Ulaanbaatar

    By Christopher R. Howard

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    National Magazine Award finalist Christopher Howard's debut novel, Tea of Ulaanbaatar, tells the story of disaffected Peace Corps volunteer Warren, who flees life in late-capitalist America to find himself stationed in the post-Soviet industrial hell of urban Mongolia. As the American presence crumbles, Warren seeks escape in tsus, the mysterious "blood tea" that may be the final revenge of the defeated Khans—or that may be only a powerful hallucinogen operating on an uneasy mind—as a phantasmagoria of violence slowly envelops him.
    With prose that combines Benjamin Kunkel's satiric bite, William Burroughs’s dark historical reimagining, and a lush literary beauty all his own, Christopher Howard in Tea of Ulaanbaatar unfolds a story of expatriate angst, the dark side of globalization, and middle-class nightmares—and announces himself as one of the most inventive and ambitious of the new generation of American novelists.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateJan 4, 2011
    ISBN9781609803353
    Unavailable
    Tea of Ulaanbaatar

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    Reviews for Tea of Ulaanbaatar

    3.5/5

    28 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The TEA OF ULAANBAATAR centers on Warren, a young Peace Corps volunteer, as he travels through the wasteland of contemporary urban Mongolia. He finds life in Ulaanbaatar as bleak as the life he left behind in the U.S., and watches as his few colleagues grow increasingly unmoored. He begins to use tsus or blood tea, a dangerous and mysterious drug, and becomes caught up in plans to export it to the rest of the world. As reality starts to fray, Warren begins to believe that tsus is not just a narcotic--it may be the harbinger of the apocalypse.The book is spare--taught prose and just 200 pages--but exceptionally vivid and atmospheric. The compelling sense of place, lyricism, and growing tension carry it beyond an empty "doing drugs in exotic locale" book, and blood tea becomes a metaphor for societal as well as individual breakdown. The Americans' take on the Mongolians is often dehumanizing, which can be uncomfortable, but this is the author's point, not his flaw. It's a dark book, but has bright moments as well, building to a satisfying conclusion (even if it breaks your heart along the way).
    • 4/5
      It would be easy to dismiss this book as another novel about disaffected Americans drawn into a drug culture and find themselves in over there head. Two things make Howard's novel stand above the typical: setting and style. Tea of Ulaanbaatar is set in Mongolia among a group of Peace Corps volunteers. By the time we meet them, any sense of idealism has been sucked out of them by the bleak world of the crumbling capital, Ulaanbaatar. Howard is able to draw the collapse of this society in a realistic way that doesn't fall into some of the cliches that often surround stories set in a city. Unfortunately, his characters aren't as strong as his writing, and it is hard to care much about the protagonist or any of the others. Still, this is a good 1st novel, and Howard is probably someone with a bright future as a novelist.
    • 4/5
      I finished this book a few days ago and I've been trying to figure out what to write about it. I've never read anything like it before, so I've been at a loss for words. And although it was a short book, I found it difficult to read for long bouts of time; however, when I wasn't reading it, I longed for it much like the titular tea.Howard writes like a fever dream feels. No quotation marks and things slide seamlessly from one scene to another. And towards the end of the novel, the reader even looses grip on what is just real and what Warren is hallucinating himself. It's best just to go with it and see where the journey takes you. Don't fight the novel, prose, plot: follow it through and come out the other end. It's more than just a modern day "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" though. There are the themes of globalization and colonization. Or democracy bringing. This book gives us a glimpse of how some parts/people of the world view Americans coming in and "fixing" their country. Overall, an amazing little book. I'm looking forward to what else Howard puts to paper.
    • 2/5
      This is a very trippy little novel about one disillusioned man's stint in the Peace Corps, stationed in the "post-Soviet industrial hell" of Mongolia. Quoteless dialogue abounds, so it is a spare, staccato look at the drugs, prosititution, poverty and decay of Ulaan Baatar. The problem with this, like so many "edgy" looks at globalization gone horribly awry, is that Warren, our protagonist, is a pretty repugnant guy. Although, his fellow Peace Corps recruits are even worse, egads. Talks about a buch of folks I have no desire to read about, these would be them. Warren epitimomizes everything that does not work about self-absorbed Americans going to impoverished countries to seeming attempt to "help" the people there. No wonder no one wants our volunteers! It just seems a new place to do drugs, engage in prostitution, be violent, use the government's money, tell weird stories and get lost. There was nothing in this book that showed that these folks actually helped anyone, at all. But maybe that was the point of it. The way Mongollia has been destroyed is actually very well documented and I understand this is one man's experience, but still, it is extremely violent, hallucinogenic and half the time I was not sure if events were happening or it was Warren's head being toasted on "tsus." (a fictional Mongolia-specific "blood tea" that is a drug which seemingly allows a person to see into the future, among other pleasantries). This novel felt like an attempt at ... something, but I'm not sure what. For such a small book, I had a hard time picking it back up. The grammarical structure did not help any either. Sometimes that works, but here it just did not. Not recommended.
    • 4/5
      The main attraction of this book was a chance to get some of the color of modern Mongolia from an author who has lived there. The author spent time in Mongolia as a peace corp volunteer. The picture he paints of modern, post soviet Mongolia is pretty bleak. Poverty and want color everything that his protaganists experiance, until they encounter the tea of the title, a powerful hallucinogenic. At this point reality and dream blend as one, a technique that certainly keeps the reader on his toes.
    • 3/5
      Author Christopher R. Howard’s first novel Tea of Ulaanbaatar reads like a combination of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” and “The Sheltering Sky” -- which is to say it’s a very weird brew indeed. Imagine a twisted coming of age story about a young man obsessing over an unsuccessful romance while living in a bizarre, threatening foreign country and downing large quantities of a mind-bending psychoactive drug and you’d be pretty close. (Howard’s references to the narcotic tea Tsus had me rushing to Google because it seemed so plausible to believe that such a thing might exist. For the record, it doesn’t.) I visited Ulanbaatar twice in the 1990s and Howard captures the “through the looking glass” disorientation, the persistent and volatile undercurrent of potential violence, and the desperation and ferocity of post-Soviet-collapse Mongolia. The scab-covered homeless children, the flirtatious and alluring young women who practice casual prostitution, the men so drunk at nine in the morning that they stagger through the streets, they all populate Tea of Ulaanbaatar. But we never learn much about them and understand even less. This novel isn’t about the Mongolians, but Americans in Mongolia. Howard’s story focuses on a set nihilistic Peace Corps volunteers and a few deranged Peace Corps staff, a group of people I’m quite sure I wouldn’t want to go bar-hopping with through Ulaanbaatar’s many here-today gone-tomorrow night clubs. Everything is disintegrating, buildings, dogs, people, morals, the past and the future. If you haven’t gathered by now, this is a dark, disturbing read.Tea of Ulaanbaatar shows some of the unsteadiness of a first novel. The no quotation marks/non-linear style sometimes adds brilliantly to the sense of displacement and sometimes is merely confusing. Some passages are polished and honed to perfection, while others are rough and untrimmed. All that said, if you like stories of people going down the rabbit hole -- some coming through on the other side and some not -- Tea of Ulaanbaatar is for you. As for me, I give it three stars for the vivid depiction of Mongolia and the fact that it kept me reading even when I winced.
    • 2/5
      Christopher Howard's writing is crisp and evocative. Even during the most feverish, drugged-out passages of the book, the action, the characters and the insanity that surrounds them can all be clearly seen; this suffuses “Tea of Ulaanbaatar” with the feeling of a well-produced, late-night docudrama about the impending end of the world. At the same time, there is much here I didn't want to see clearly: the disparaging, prejudiced portrayals of the frequently-evil Mongol people; the morally bankrupt Peace Corps volunteers; the immaculately decrepit city and surroundings. In total, an easy, occasionally uncomfortable read that didn't quite work for me.
    • 5/5
      Tea of Ulaanbaatar opens on a simple thought, a fulfilled desire that seems rather ordinary: the main character, Warren, finally remembers a poem that had alluded him for months. The narrator observes it’s ironic that Warren has remembered at precisely that moment, but we don’t really appreciate just what the narrator has revealed at the start of this novel until we have travelled its pages. What a journey that turns out to be.Tea of Ulaanbaatar is set in the capital city of late 20th century Mongolia and features Peace Corps volunteers posted there. A Peace Corps mission to a strange place may suggest an epic saga of heroic efforts and commonplace miracles to cheer. That the mission takes place deep within Central Asia, in a land that anthropologists tell us peopled continents (Asia, Americas, Europe) and where historians tell us the world’s first empire originated, may suggest soaring reveries on the spacious and harsh natural beauty of Mongolia and its people. There is a chance it may be a 21st century pastoral novel. But I suppose if life were that simple, adults would remain satisfied with children’s picture-books and picturesque travel guides. For even though Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia provides the occasion and the setting for the novel, the physical place is not the focal point of this hellish ride. Rather, the extreme conditions and culture shocks are existential, psychological, and interior. The writer has given us a sharp narrator to guide us through the hell Warren and his companions experience. On the surface, there are plenty of drugs and drink, inexplicable violence, and blunt descriptions of sex acts and sexual attitudes in this novel, all of which escalate as the narrator unfolds his story. The narrator remains with Warren throughout the novel, and in certain passages, the narrator and Warren seem to morph together. But for the most part the narrator seems like an additional character in the novel--and is perhaps the wisest and most likable character in this novel. The narrator is clear and brutal about what he reveals and when, and it seems he redeems Warren only because he likes him. The narrator is a keen observer of the other characters, sympathetic to some (a couple of whom seem undeserving of sympathy) and quite cruel with others--just as we all-too-human humans are. The narrator comes to the novel knowledgable beyond what he shares with us: he is the character whose survival is most assured in this precarious place. Another reviewer of this novel has noted its noir style, and I agree with that impression. The writer has skillfully woven noir elements throughout with a craft that reminded me of Nathanael West’s devastating Miss Lonelyhearts. As the narrator tells it, there are no heroes in Ulaanbaatar--this ruined (and ruinous) city strewn with grimy bars, broken people and animals, and crumbling buildings, which from a different perspective could convey a nostalgic charm. There are only anti-heroes in Ulaanbaatar. Warren and the others exist in a state of utter disillusionment, or complete despair, where hardly anyone has any empathy for the suffering of others. That said, at times Warren seems troubled by his own lack of empathy, and in classic noir fashion, Warren clings to a hope that an earlier romantic love may save him, no matter how slim those chances seem (it maybe this that endears Warren to the narrator). As it frequently does, disillusionment verges into black comedy--in particular during the scenes involving the whacked-out supervisor of the Peace Corps volunteers. Yeah, we laugh so we won’t cry. Warren embarks on a never-ending quest for spiritual wholeness through experiences that must be jacked-up because nothing really overcomes his dread. Neither the mystical tea of the title, nor sex, criminal transgressions, violence to self and others, or sublime hallucinations on the steppes of Mongolia can overcome such malaise. Claustrophobia permeates the novel and engulfs everyone, including the narrator and the reader. Although Warren moves around within the city and beyond, and the novel has exacting description of action, there is an overall sense of confinement, of being trapped, throughout the novel. In the second scene of the novel, Warren and the other Peace Corps volunteers are locked in the airplane that brought them to Mongolia and they believe they will suffocate. Two women even hit the aisle floor, they feel so trapped. This claustrophobia the Americans feel right after arrival will never leave them no matter where they go or what they do in Ulaanbaatar, and it never leaves the narrator, focused as he is on Warren’s thoughts, actions, and desires. The overall claustrophobic effect reminded me very much of the claustrophobic effect I have always felt structured Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. For it’s as if the narrator of Tea of Ulaanbaatar has landed in a maze of trench warfare. And where the narrator lands, so too does the reader. It’s an astonishing effect considering the expansiveness and openness one might imagine when one encounters a novel about a Peace Corps mission abroad. I suppose we would rather like to imagine the vastness of the world opening before young, idealistic individuals on well-meaning missions to stricken places and desperate people. The novelist has reminded us that life is never that simple.
    • 3/5
      Tea of Ulaanbaater is a taut and proficient story of a disillusioned and corruptible Peace Corps volunteer whose life is disintegrating in Ulaanbaater, the capital of Mongolia. Christopher Howard writes about this locale with some authority as he was a Peace Corps volunteer in an aborted mission to Mongolia. His protagonist, Warren, much like Howard it appears, is revolted at first by what he sees. Warren, and his obsession with cleanliness, perhaps a self-delusion of faultless superiority, is eventually overrun by filth and vermin until he is as base as the very worst villain. Can he wash away his sin? Can he be redeemed?Ulaanbaater seems a fitting location for moral breakdown as the former Soviet satellite described by Howard is itself withering from parasitical opportunists and criminals. The local upper class steal foreign aid, the police are drunken louts, criminality is rife, foreign profiteers prey upon human weakness and foreign volunteers steel much needed medicine and supplies for their own personal cravings. The local populace suffers immeasurably.Warren’s own curiosity and spiritual hunger lead him to partake of the primary distractions available, sex and drugs. Neither relieve the pangs of emptiness until he learns of the mysterious and mythical “blood tea”, tsus. Tsus is a kind of hallucinogenic plant, perhaps akin to marijuana or opium, which can be drunk like a tea or smoked.Tea is a recurring theme in the novel. Various descriptions of teas are interwoven in the narrative. They seem to act as a kind of ballast for the magical properties of tsus. Tsus seems to taste differently to different persons or at different times. It creates euphoria and leads to dreams of various types, some of which lead the user to the belief of being able to see the future. Once tsus-induced dreaming occurs, it becomes difficult to determine what is real or what is possible. Tsus becomes a portal to the horrors and ecstasies of imagination.If there is a real fault in the novel, it is the author’s susceptibility to sensationalism. Hot Mongolian chicks, Russian thugs, extreme violence and drugs seem primarily a young man’s preoccupation of what is interesting about life in a place. In this work, they effectively drive the plot but also detract from what is often some very fine writing.Nevertheless, this is an impressive debut to a promising career as a novelist.