Penguin Readies First Chinese Acquisition for Publication

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 3/25/2008 7:21:00 AM

This Thursday, March 27, Penguin Group will do a global release of the Chinese hit, Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong. The book, acquired by Penguin chairman John Makinson, won the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize last year and was a publishing phenomenon in China, where it has sold more than six million copies—two million legitimately published versions as well as approximately four million pirated ones—since its 2004 release. The author, a Chinese dissident who writes under a pen name, has tried to stay out of the spotlight, and will not tour to promote the U.S. publication of Wolf Totem. However, the book's translator, Howard Goldblatt, will make appearances to promote the book in the U.S.

Penguin paid an unprecedented (for a Chinese book) amount for Wolf Totem in 2005: The Guardian reported $100,000. According to the International Herald Tribune, Penguin expects as many as two million copies to be sold in English, although the house would not release official first printing numbers.

Wolf Totem is part ecological warning, part political indictment, and is set in 1960s Cultural Revolution-era Inner Mongolia. PW’s review said, “Jiang Rong writes reverently about life on the steppes in a manner that recalls Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf.” Film rights to Wolf Totem were optioned by the Beijing Forbidden City Film Co. The company is currently looking for an international partner.