Kekketyn, Ketsai

Kekketyn, Ketsai 

Born in 1918 in Konnaia Rechka, in present-day Tigil’ Raion, Kamchatka; died in 1943. Soviet Koriak (Nymylan) writer.

Kekketyn, the son of a farm laborer, studied at the Institute of the Peoples of the North in Leningrad. In his works, such as Evnyto the Shepherd (1936; Russian translation, 1958) and Khoailkhot (1939; Russian translation, 1955), he describes Ko-riak rituals and customs and depicts the life and work of hunters and reindeer breeders. In his novella The Last Battle (1936) oral folk legends have been uniquely interpreted. Kekketyn wrote stories for The Book of Readings (parts 1–2, 1938). He also translated a number of works by A. S. Pushkin and A. P. Chekhov into Koriak. He died at the front during the Great Patriotic War.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
“Avtobiografiia.” In Sovetskaia etnografiia, collection 1. Leningrad, 1938.

REFERENCE

Nikulin, A. “Ketsai Kekketyn.” Na rubezhe. (Khabarovsk) 1939, no. 3.