Tulpan

It is impossible to resist the opportunity to use the word yurt in a sentence. Even if the movie had stunk I'd still be excited to say something like, Never have I seen so much dung heaped about a yurt!

The Kazakh steppe looks to me rather like the Oklahoma panhandle, only more so. Flattened by the immensely azure sky is a spread of chalky canvas on which to sketch an existence. Asa, a would-be shepherd just back from the Russian navy, does exactly that: sketch on the pale side of his neckerchief a camel and a modest home and some guiding stars. His own dustblown paradise. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good yurt must be in want of a wife. Except Asa hasn't yet got a yurt, which makes two problems.