Books News
New novel set during Cultural Revolution
By M&C News
May 10, 2008, 10:45 GMT

The latest novel by Jiang Rong is called Wolf Totem, and it is what the NYT describes as, “Set during the Cultural Revolution, “Wolf Totem” describes the education of an intellectual from China’s majority Han community living with nomadic herders in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.”

Translated by Howard Goldblatt, the NYT reviewer then notes, “Unlike most memoirs of the Cultural Revolution, “Wolf Totem” omits significant emotional as well as political detail.”

Yet one has to ask why this is a bad thing, since it is the narrative that matters most and isn’t a historical book, and nor do readers need to be told the details on how to “feel”.

Publishers Weekly describes the book, “A publishing sensation in China, this novel wraps an ecological warning and political indictment around the story of Chen Zhen, a Beijing student sent during the 1960s Cultural Revolution to live as a shepherd among the herdsmen of the Olonbulang, a grassland on the Inner Mongolia steppes.”

A lengthy NYT review can be read here.

Penguin Press is the publisher.