Wolf Totem is a semi-autobiographical novel about the experiences of a young student from Beijing who finds himself sent down to the countryside of Inner Mongolia in 1967, at the height of China's Cultural Revolution. The author, Lü Jiamin, wrote the book under the pseudonym Jiang Rong; his true identity did not become publicly known until several years after the book's publication.
Wolf Totem is narrated by protagonist Chen Zhen, a young man in ...
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Wolf Totem is a semi-autobiographical novel about the experiences of a young student from Beijing who finds himself sent down to the countryside of Inner Mongolia in 1967, at the height of China's Cultural Revolution. The author, Lü Jiamin, wrote the book under the pseudonym Jiang Rong; his true identity did not become publicly known until several years after the book's publication.
Wolf Totem is narrated by protagonist Chen Zhen, a young man in his 20s who, like the author, left his native Beijing to work in Inner Mongolia during the cultural revolution. Through descriptions of folk traditions, rituals, and life on the steppe, Wolf Totem compares the culture of the ethnic Mongolian nomads and the Han Chinese farmers who settle in their territory, praising the "freedom, independence, respect, unyielding before hardship, teamwork and competition" of the former and criticising the "autocratic, sheeplike" nature of the latter. The book condemns the agricultural collectivisation imposed...
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