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Wolf Totem

Jiang Rong

Hardcover | Pages: 527 pages

Rating: 4.02 | 3463 Users | 499 Reviews

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Title	:	Wolf Totem
Author	:	Jiang Rong
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 527 pages
Published	:	March 27th 2008 by Penguin Press (first published April 1st 2004)
Categories	:	Fiction. Cultural. China. Historical. Historical Fiction. Asia. Asian Literature. Chinese Literature. Animals. Literature

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An epic Chinese tale in the vein of The Last Emperor, Wolf Totem depicts the dying culture of the Mongols-the ancestors of the Mongol hordes who at one time terrorized the world-and the parallel extinction of the animal they believe to be sacred: the fierce and otherworldly Mongolian wolf

Published under a pen name, Wolf Totem was a phenomenon in China, breaking all sales records there and earning the distinction of being the second most read book after Mao's little red book. There has been much international excitement too-to date, rights have been sold in thirteen countries. Wolf Totem is set in 1960s China-the time of the Great Leap Forward, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution.

Searching for spirituality, Beijing intellectual Chen Zhen travels to the pristine grasslands of Inner Mongolia to live among the nomadic Mongols-a proud, brave, and ancient race of people who coexist in perfect harmony with their unspeakably beautiful but cruel natural surroundings. Their philosophy of maintaining a balance with nature is the ground stone of their religion, a kind of cult of the wolf.

The fierce wolves that haunt the steppes of the unforgiving grassland searching for food are locked with the nomads in a profoundly spiritual battle for survival-a life-and-death dance that has gone on between them for thousands of years. The Mongols believe that the wolf is a great and worthy foe that they are divinely instructed to contend with, but also to worship and to learn from. Chen's own encounters with the otherworldly wolves awake a latent primitive instinct in him, and his fascination with them blossoms into obsession, then reverence.

After many years, the peace is shattered with the arrival of Chen's kinfolk, Han Chinese, sent from the cities to bring modernity to the grasslands. They immediately launch a campaign to exterminate the wolves, sending the balance that has been maintained with religious dedication for thousands of years into a spiral leading to extinction-first the wolves, then the Mongol culture, finally the land. As a result of the eradication of the wolves, rats become a plague and wild sheep graze until the meadows turn to dust. Mongolian dust storms glide over Beijing, sometimes blocking out the moon.

Part period epic, part fable for modern days, Wolf Totem is a stinging social commentary on the dangers of China's overaccelerated economic growth as well as a fascinating immersion into the heart of Chinese culture.

Identify Books As Wolf Totem

Original Title:	狼图腾
ISBN:	1594201560 (ISBN13: 9781594201561)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Batu, 陳陣, Chen Zhen, Bilgee, Yang Ke, Uljii, Gasmai, Erlang, Yir, Kuning
Setting:	內蒙古(China)
Literary Awards:	Man Asian Literary Prize (2007), 亞洲週刊中文十大好書 (2004)

Rating Based On Books Wolf Totem

Ratings: 4.02 From 3463 Users | 499 Reviews

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"Old longings nomadic leap,Chafing at custom's chain;Again from its brumal sleepWakens the ferine strain."The Wolf Totem, like The Call of the Wild, a book that it is often compared to, calls for a return to unfettered nature, with its individualism and harsh, but utterly logical values. The wolves dont kill because they are cruel, but because, like all other living creatures, they need to eat to sustain themselves. The beautiful Inner Mongolian grassland which serves as the setting for this

Put it down to being something lost in translation, but the book's prose was rather dry. Nevertheless, it was an interesting cultural experience and I enjoyed reading of the Mongols symbiotic relationship with the grasslands on which they lived, especially their relationship with their cultural totem, the wolf. Whatever the book lacks, it pays to read it, especailly in this day of our collective enviromental concerns in having needlessly and excessively burned up far too much of our natural

This has been a reading experience unlike any other for me. Through the eyes of a Chinese student, sent to Inner Mongolia as part of a volunteer program during the Cultural Revolution, we see a nomadic way of life as it has existed for centuries and as it is on the verge of it's death before encroaching masses of Chinese seeking land and food. (The author was involved in the same type of program for 11 years, beginning in 1967.)Chen Zhen, and 2 or 3 like-minded friends in the student brigade,

I'm missing something, I guess.I mean, I get why the book might have been popular in China; I don't really know the issues, but there are long philosophical discussions on the nature of the Chinese character--meaning the character of Han Chinese--which could theoretically strike a chord. I'm not sure I get the interest beyond the national borders, though.Because it's not a great story--it's a conventional story--the characters are never more than stereotypes, the dialogue (and prose generally)

I loved it. Heartbreaking and pertinent. Setting aside any reservations one might have about style (one reads for many things, style being only one of them), I enjoyed the book most for its depiction of the social and bureaucratic processes of the Great Leap Forward and how these brought about the destruction of a culture and of an ecology. The story has an urgent poignancy with its lessons wrapped in a nice little tale along the lines of Born Free, but with a less happy ending. Chens love for

4½ stars. Although the ending is no surprise, tears still welled up in my eyes. The view of a lost way of life on the grasslands of Mongolia was fairly unsentimental most of the time, despite the narrator's somewhat heavy-handed infatuation with the wolf totem.

Brilliantly narrated and gripping tale of a Chinese student who witnesses the destruction of the Mongolian totem and their grassland by the Han farmers and the problem with China's policies regardless of regional considerations. Kept me absorbed. The end is heavy. Must read.