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'Wolf Totem' Eulogizes Mongolian Culture A captivating English translation of Jiang Rong's award-winning novel chronicles a Beijing student's immersion with nomadic farmers of the Mongolian grasslands just before China's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s. The story becomes a passionate eulogy to a ferocious and far-flung way life, and to the wolf, the foremost predator of the grasslands.

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'Wolf Totem' Eulogizes Mongolian Culture

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ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:

Reviewer Alan Cheuse says you don't have to read far to discover why.

ALAN CHEUSE: Hundreds of bloody pages on, as we grimace at the fraying of a 2,000-year-old way of life, one wants to stand up - and there's no other way to put it - just...

(SOUNDBITE OF IMITATION OF WOLF'S HOWL)

SIEGEL: Alan Cheuse teaches writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

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