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Jiang Rong wins Man Asian Prize

12.11.07 Kimberly Maul

Beijing-based author Jiang Rong has won the 2007 Man Asian Prize for his novel Wolf Totem. The prize, which recognizes the best of new Asian literature that has not yet been published in English, comes with a $10,000 award for Rong and a $3,000 award for his translator, Howard Goldblatt.

Wolf Totem is a fictional account of the life of the people of the Inner Mongolian grasslands and the delicate balance between the nomads, their livestock and the wild wolves in the area. The book is loosely based on Rong's personal experience living in the grasslands. Published in Chinese by the Changjiang Art and Culture Publishing, Wolf Totem will be released in English in March 2008 by Penguin.

"My story of Mongolia’s wolves is the product of an ongoing study of the Inner Mongolian environment, and interpretation of the meanings behind the natural behavior of animals," said Rong, who was unable to make it to the ceremony in Hong Kong due to ill health. "Through this story, I also reflect upon the nature of Chinese people. That such a Chinese story can come to the attention of the Man Asian Literary Prize is a great thing."

Rong beat out four other books on the shortlist: Soledad's Sister, by Jose Dalisay Jr., Families at Home, by Reeti Gadekar, Smile As They Bow, by Nu Nu Yi Inwa, and Habit of a Foreign Sky, by Xu Xi. The judges for the award were Adrienne Clarkson, former Governor General of Canada, author and scholar André Aciman, and Nicholas Jose, writer, scholar and former Cultural Counselor at the Australian Embassy in China.

"A panoramic novel of life on the Mongolian grasslands during the Cultural Revolution, this masterly work is also a passionate argument about the complex interrelationship between nomads and settlers, animals and human beings, nature and civilization," Clarkson said of Wolf Totem. The slowly developing narrative is rendered in vivid detail and has a powerful cumulative effect. A book like no other. Memorable."

US Kimberly Maul Prize Man Asian Literary Prize

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