About the book: 1972 / Kalmyk poet and writer Alexey Balakaev was born on the banks of the Volga, in Shikirtya. He collaborated with the regional newspaper "Krasnoyarsk Worker" since 1948. Book of poems A Balakaev’s “The First Song” was published in 1959 in the Kalmyk language. Then new collections are published in Elista: “The Steppe Spark”, “Happiness Gifted by Lenin”, the stories “Beauty Saglar” and “The Continuation of Life”. Alexey Balakaev is the author of the first Kalmyk novel “The Star over Elista”. The writer also works a lot as a translator. He translated into Kalmyk language “How the Steel Was Tempered” by N. Ostrovsky, N. Veretennikov’s book “Volodya Ulyanov”, poems by Yakub Kolas and other works of Soviet literature.