Wolf Totem

Editor's Pick for March 25, 2008

By Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal -- Library Journal, 3/25/2008 12:36:00 PM

Jiang Rong. Wolf Totem. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Apr. 2008. c.544p. tr. from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt. ISBN 978-1-59420-156-1. $26.95. F
Deep in Inner Mongolia, at the time of the Great Leap Forward, Han Chinese scholar Chen waits for hours with his mentor, Old Man Bilgee, watching wolves as they prepare an attack. He’s already learned how closely the wolves and the nomads are linked—Tennger, god of the grasslands, has seen to it, and even Genghis Khan borrowed the wolves’ tricks. Suddenly, the wolves drive an enormous herd of gazelle into deep snow, where many of them literally drown. The wolves leave the carcasses preserved in the drifts, to be eaten later when food is scarce. Bilgee allows that they can take a few, but others, less attuned to the ways of the grasslands, take more. And so the wolves go hungry and manage a gruesome revenge. Thus commences a struggle that symbolizes not only the subjugation of nature by humans but the subjugation of Mongolia by China. The author, who writes under a pseudonym, volunteered along the border of Inner and Outer Mongolia in the 1960s and writes with piercing perception about native and wolf ways. The result is a naturalistic, gripping, and deeply affecting novel reminding us how badly we humans have managed our world. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/07.]