Winner of inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize 2007

A panel of three internationally acclaimed authors and literary judges named Jiang Rong winner of the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize for the novel Wolf Totem. The prize winner was announced at a celebratory dinner at Hong Kong. Jiang Rong was awarded USD 10,000 and the book's translator, Howard Goldblatt, was awarded USD 3,000. Jiang Rong was born in Jiangsu, southern China, in 1946, and graduated from the middle school attached to China Art College in 1966. In 1967, Jiang moved from Beijing to live with nomadic communities on the Chinese border of Inner and Outer Mongolia for 11 years. Following his return to Beijing in 1978, Jiang studied political science and eventually became an academic. Now retired, he lives in Beijing with his wife.
Adrienne Clarkson, Chair of the judges said of Wolf Totem: "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 culture. The slowly developing narrative is rendered in vivid detail and has a powerful cumulative effect. A book like no other. Memorable."