Word: jiang
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...universal appeal," says Jo Lusby, head of Penguin's China operations in Beijing. But it can be equally argued that they perceived different components of the same thing: a searching song of the ascendant Chinese nation, seeking to know itself. The U.S. had its Whitman and Thoreau; China has Jiang, wandering the huge grassy expanses and singing of primordial elements - blood, death, soil - to which the nation is no longer attuned. "The heat caused by Wolf Totem ... is a symptom of Chinese people's collective depletion of spiritual belief," wrote critic Zhang Hong in the highbrow Wenhui Readers' Weekly...
Bespectacled and graying, 62-year-old Jiang Rong doesn't look as though he could have written Wolf Totem - an eccentric, blood-soaked eulogy to the fiercest inhabitants of the Mongolian plains that has sold millions of copies in China since its publication in 2004. In fact, publicity is something of a strain for a man who, until recently, was so averse to exposure that he refused to be photographed. But Jiang is enduring it as part of the worldwide launch of the much touted English-language translation of his book, which has just been released by Penguin...
...Although he still hasn't revealed his real name (Jiang is a pseudonym), the obligation to promote Wolf Totem means that these days Jiang will reveal previously guarded details of his life and the creation of his unlikely best seller - and they make it clear that behind the slightly donnish exterior, he has lived with the same willful spirit as the wolves he writes about. He has, for instance, been arrested five times for being a "counterrevolutionary," experiencing beatings and five years in prison (the last stint for leading a group of students to the protests in Beijing's Tiananmen...
...Athena Y. Jiang, Clifford M. Marks and Nathan C. Strauss contributed to the reporting of this story...
...Clifford M. Marks contributed to the reporting of this story.—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.—Staff writer Athena Y. Jiang can be reached at ajiang@fas.harvard.edu.—Staff writer Rachel A. Stark can reached at rstark@fas.harvard.edu...