Jiang Rong has been awarded the inaugural Man Asian Literary Award for his controversial novel Wolf Totem. The award ceremony was held in Hong Kong on 10 November with an internationally acclaimed panel of authors selecting Rong from the five shortlisted novels:

Jose Dalisay Jr., Soledad’s Sister
Reeti Gadekar, Families at Home
Nu Nu Yi Inwa, Smile As They Bow
Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem
Xu Xi, Habit of a Foreign Sky 

The Man Asian Award was established to recognise the best of new Asian literature and bring it to the attention of the world literary community. Works submitted for consideration must not yet have been published in English, although they may have been published in other languages.

Written under a pseudonym (the author’s chequered history includes a spell  in prison after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989), Wolf Totem  is a tale of environmental destruction, spiritual freedom and the threat modernity poses to the nomadic way of life. It will be published in English next year.