by Jiang Rong
translated by Howard Goldblatt
I feel a bit inadequate to say anything about this sweeping novel. Wolf Totem is a semi-autobiographical work about a Chinese student from Beijing named Chen Zhen who goes to live among the nomadic people of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution. During his ten or so years there, he lives among the sheep and horse herders, learning about the Mongolian way of life and most of all, about the wolves. The Mongolians wage constant war against wolves because they prey on the sheep and horses, yet at the same time they revere the animals, understanding that without this key predator the mice and marmots would quickly overrun the grassland and ruin the habitat. The more Chen learns about the wolves, the more fascinated he becomes, until he moves to steal a live wolf cub from its den and raise it in captivity, in order to study it. His plan is met with outrage by the Mongolians, who feel that keeping a wolf in captivity is demeaning to the animal, as well as dangerous. As Chen struggles to keep his wolf cub alive and deal with the problems it presents, a greater threat looms. Migrating Han Chinese come into the area to establish farms on the grassland, heedless of the elders\’ warnings that this will be destructive to the fragile grassland environment. And one of the first things they do is start a campaign to exterminate all the wolves.
This book has a lot of political themes which I did not fully comprehend, but I gather have made it very controversial. I was more interested in the environmental issues, and fascinated by the dual relationship the Mongols had with wolves- waging fearsome bloody battles against them, learning tactics of war from their pack behavior, and honoring their dead by giving them in \”sky burials\” to the wolves. It was fascinating to read about the Mongolain culture, something entirely new to me, and also heartbreaking to see how incoming farmers quickly affected the landscape. The fate of the captive wolf cub was also very sad. I nearly cried at the end.
Rating: 4/5 …….. 527 pages, 2008
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