Rough Magic

For fans of Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk, this is the extraordinary debut memoir of a young woman who traveled to Mongolia to compete in the world’s longest, toughest horse race, and emerged as its youngest and first-ever female winner.

At the age of nineteen, Lara Prior-Palmer discovered a website devoted to “the world’s longest, toughest horse race”—an annual competition of endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of twenty-five wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. On a whim, she decided to enter the race. As she boarded a plane to East Asia, she was utterly unprepared for what awaited her.

Riders often spend years preparing to compete in the Mongol Derby, a course that recreates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan, and many fail to finish. Prior-Palmer had no formal training. She was driven by her own restlessness, stubbornness, and a lifelong love of horses. She raced for ten days through extreme heat and terrifying storms, catching a few hours of sleep where she could at the homes of nomadic families.

Battling bouts of illness and dehydration, exhaustion and bruising falls, she decided she had nothing to lose. Each dawn she rode out again on a fresh horse, scrambling up mountains, swimming through rivers, crossing woodlands and wetlands, arid dunes and open steppe, as American television crews chased her in their Jeeps.

Told with terrific suspense and style, in a voice full of poetry and soul, Rough Magic captures the extraordinary story of one young woman who forged ahead, against all odds, to become the first female winner of this breathtaking race.

Pentru fanii filmului H Is for Hawk al lui Helen Macdonald, acesta este memorialul de debut extraordinar al unei tinere care a calatorit in Mongolia pentru a concura in cea mai lunga si mai dura cursa de cai din lume si a aparut ca fiind cea mai tanara si prima femeie castigatoare. din nouasprezece, Lara Prior-Palmer a descoperit un site dedicat „celei mai lungi si mai dure curse de cai din lume” - o competitie anuala de rezistenta si indemanare care implica zeci de calareti care conduc o serie de douazeci si cinci de ponei salbatici pe 1.000 de kilometri de pajisti mongole.