Author of Chinese novel Wolf Totem wins award in Mongolia

By Xu Jing (chinadaily.com.cn)

Updated: 2015-08-21

A poster of Wolf Totem, a movie directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, and released in China and abroad. [File photo]

Published in 2004, Wolf Totem is Jiang's semi-autobiographical novel about the experiences of a young student from Beijing who leaves his home to work in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution. Through descriptions of folk traditions, rituals, and life on the steppe, the novel compares the culture of the ethnic Mongolian nomads and the Han Chinese farmers in the area.

Up to this June, the sales volume of the book in China reached six million.It has been translated to more than 30 languages, and published in more than 110 countries and regions in the world. In early this year, a film adapted by well-known French director Jean-Jacques Annaud was released in China and abroad.

Wolf Totem was translated into Mongolian, and published in Mongolia in 2010. Like in China, it became the best-selling fiction almost overnight. According to An Boshun, one out of every nine Mongolian had read the book, and gave excellent reviews. Some readers even described the book as "a bible in Mongolia".

Recently, the book was translated into Kazakhstan and became popular in the country. A Kazakh peot wrote, "Because of Wolf Totem, people in Mongolia and Kazakhstan find their own totem finally."