AboutThoughts on books and the bookish life from an ardent bibliophile and former bookseller. The author, Lisa Guidarini, is the adult program coordinator for the Algonquin Area Public Library and reviews books for a variety of publishing house and periodicals. Lisa is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Recent Posts:Library Thing
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The Book’s The ThingNovember 12, 2007 Man Asia Award WinnerChinese literary sensation wins Man Asia award Jonathan Watts in Beijing Guardian A controversial Chinese tale of environmental destruction, spiritual freedom and the threat modernity poses to the nomadic way of life has won the first Man Asia literary prize. Wolf Totem was written by a retired professor under the pseudonym Jiang Rong, because of its sensitive subject matter and the author’s chequered history, which includes a spell in jail after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Adrienne Clarkson, the chair of the judging panel, called Wolf Totem “a passionate argument about the complex interrelationship between nomads and settlers, animals and human beings, nature and culture. The slowly developing narrative is rendered in vivid detail and has a powerful cumulative effect. A book like no other. Memorable.” The novel is based on the author’s experiences as an intellectual in the inner-Mongolian grasslands during the 1966-76 cultural revolution. It extols the virtues of Mongolian nomads, who find a balance in living with nature, even with the wolves that prey on their herds. This way of life is threatened by the materialism of the Han ethnic majority, who bring environmental destruction and an oppressive political culture that is the antithesis of the free nomadic and wolf-like spirit. Jiang, 61, whose real name is Lu Jiamin, was unable to attend the ceremony in Hong Kong because of ill health, but in a statement he said he had spent 30 years thinking and six years writing the novel. Wolf Totem is a publishing phenomenon in China, where it has sold two million legal copies, along with an estimated 10 times that number of pirated books. It has been the subject of literary debates, management motivation courses and military training lectures. Even the propaganda minister has praised its style, something which may have saved it from a ban. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 No Comments »RSS feed for comments on this post. Leave a comment
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