Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong (Penguin)

Large countries have frontiers, and these are places where myths are born. America has its far West and China has the steppes that are the gateway to Mongolia. Both places have given rise to legendary men, the U.S. cowboy and the nomadic horsemen whose forbears rode with Genghis Khan to conquer the northern half of China, and subsequently much of the known world.

Chen Zhen is a student of history who comes to Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution with two boxes of banned books and a strong sense of curiosity about the world around him. Becoming fascinated by the nomadic hunters whom he lives with, Chen apprentices himself to an old man who still holds a leadership position among his people and whose knowledge is encyclopedic.Slowly Chen learns the importance of wolves to nomadic culture and how these animals are both highly revered and fiercely fought against.

While searching for the key to Mongolian military conquests, Chen begins to attribute this feat to the wisdom the Mongols have learned from the wolves. The strategies used by wolves to track down prey and elude human cunning Chen sees mirrored in the hunting skills of the nomads who surround him and in the accounts he has read of Mongolian battle campaigns. in an attempt to learn more about an animal whom he feels has shaped history, Chen kidnaps a wolf cub to raise as his own and to observe in a scientific manner.

He doesn't expect to fall in love with the small wolf, or with the wild beauty of Inner Mongolia's grasslands. Nor does he remember the warning that each man kills the thing he loves.

This novel is written by a man who lived much of Chen Zhen's fictional life. Jiang Rong volunteered to work in Inner Mongolia in 1967 and lived there until 1978. He adopted an orphaned wolf cub (a far more benign acquisition than Chen's abduction)and raised it and obviously loved it. His eleven years on the steppes are conveyed quite beautifully in this novel--a love letter to a vanished world--and the account of Chen's spiritual odyssey rings true on every level, even when it is cruel and thoughtless, as well as when it is lyrical.

The novel in many ways is an environmental lamentation and an indictment of empire building and manifest destiny that at times threatens to swamp the story but never does. It is an amazing book to come out of China, where it "sold in the millions--in both authorized and pirated editions". It would be interesting to know whether Chen's philosophic reflections and the unsparing descriptions of the Han Chinese settlers were included in the Chinese edition, and how the omission of these portions would alter the pace and focus of the novel. Would the adventure of Mongolian wolf hunts and the haunting beauty and sadness of Chen's relationship with the baby wolf make a better novel without the didactic discursions? Read Wolf Totem and decide for yourself...

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer (Knopf)

Kristianne Huntsberger, bookseller emeritus and professional nomad, from wherever she may be at the moment, sends a review of Pico Iyer's examination of one of the most revered men in the world.

How are we to think about the Dalai Lama, the Nobel laureate, the king kept from his country, the spiritual leader, the pop culture darling and the unswerving voice of global compassion? In the past half- century the Dalai Lama has been thrust onto the world’s stage, first as a fairy tale prince driven from his home and now as the beatific wise man who has charmed billions of people across the globe. Because the Dalai Lama maneuvers a variety of roles, a biography of him is a daunting task. Seasoned travel writer Pico Iyer rises to the challenge in his newest book, which, far from inappropriately simplifying the Dalai Lama’s life, instead concentrates on the complexity of all the interpretations and expectations of him.

Drawing on experiences from his 30-year acquaintance with the Dalai Lama, Iyer addresses both the public and the personal life of the monk, the politician, the philosopher and iconic figure of both tradition and change. We learn the history of Tibet’s entry into the global neighborhood and the Dalai Lama’s reactions to these changes. We see crowds come like moths to flame and see the man grow tired, or long for the simple life of a monk.

Ultimately, Iyer considers the Dalai Lama a doctor in our global neighborhood who is trained to heal specific ills. His focus lies less in our physical human ailments than in our spiritual needs and his strategy is distinctly focused on showing us how important our own role is in our healing. The Dalai Lama is thus a good doctor, according to Iyer, because “a doctor’s paradoxical wisdom often is to make himself redundant.” He strives to inspire each of us to take control of our own health, either by using the tools and advice he gives us, or by going ourselves to the source.

The future looms as Iyer follows the Dalai Lama through Japan, Canada, the United States and back to his exile home in Dharamsala. There is a palpable question that lies between everyone who works closely with the Dalai Lama: What will happen when he is gone? Will we succeed in adopting global policies of compassion? Will the Chinese government install a political puppet in the Dalai Lama’s place? He has done what he can as a philosopher, a politician and a global icon but, in the end, he must simply hope that the wisdom he has prescribed will be taken to heart, and that his country and the world will recover from their maladies. Meanwhile, he continues to pray for his Chinese brothers and sisters daily and he turns out each light when he exits a room because, he tells Iyer, even such a small gesture can have effect, especially if more people in more rooms remember to do this.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (Random House)

Kristianne Huntsberger, a writer, a performance artist, a folklorist, and one of the world's true booksellers, joins Ernie Hoyt and Janet Brown at Asia By the Book.

At the raw end of the Cultural Revolution, three years after Chairman Mao's death and the Gang of Four's arrest, the residents of small-town China are reeling from the upheaval, trying to decipher some meaning to their lives. Yiyun Li takes us into the private world of the people of Muddy River, where a dozen appropriately charming and idiosyncratic characters grapple with problems, both personal and patriotic, which arise following the public execution of Teacher Gu's daughter, Gu Shan. A former pioneer of Mao, Shan’s public doubt of communism brands her a dangerous counterrevolutionary. For her dissension, and the threat she poses to society, she is killed. But the people's commitment to these demonstrations is not as fervent as it once was and the seed of doubt is transferred to them.

Shan's death reminds each character of his or her inescapable fate. Identity is unalterable and we are confined both by our past and by the popular perception. The novel's Shakespearian fool, Bashi, notes that his perceived idiocy is "one of the rare crimes for which one could never get enough punishment. A robber or a thief got a sentence of a year or more for a crime--a stolen purse--but the tag of idiot, just as counterrevolutionary, was a charge against someone's very being.” For these charges one cannot serve time and gain reconciliation with society; the sentence of one's identity is final.

We see the characters trying to escape these identity confines, trying to see new possibilities and to alter the course of their lives. There is a scent of change, a flicker of hope and some unidentifiable potential. Ultimately though, it is Teacher Gu's dark voice of reason that shadows the actions of all the others.

When Mrs. Gu, fed up with the injustice of her daughter's death, the inability to perform proper mourning rights, and the overall sense of confinement, reaches her transformative moment, she is brought down by her husband's determined acquiescence: "'What I own is my fortune; what I'm owed is my fate,'"Teacher Gu answered. The words sounded soothing and he repeated them one more time to himself in a low chanting voice. His wife did not reply and shut herself in the bedroom."

Teacher Gu recognizes the utter hopelessness of their human condition and the commonality of suffering, wherein every action is as hopeless as the letters that he mails to his first wife, which are intercepted, surprisingly passed through the censors, and dropped unopened upon the desk of the woman who lies dying in a hospital bed somewhere out of reach.

Yiyun Li's language is rich and her characters charming for their deeply human flaws. Already acknowledged with several awards, including a Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and a PEN/Hemingway Award, Yiyun Li skillfully blends personal exploration and social commentary. She calls upon her memories of China, which she left in 1996, to create an authentic and complicated story of a country and its people.

Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter by Shoko Tendo (Kodansha)

From Tokyo, Ernie Hoyt offers a new reading suggestion with his review of a highly original memoir.

Many people think of the Yakuza in its simplest terms - the Japanese mafia-- an image they've probably learned from bad Hollywood films or Takeshi Kitano movies such as "Brothers" or "Dolls". While it may be true that the Yakuza controls most of the red light districts, as well as having a hand in loan sharking, money laundering, and gun running, it is also an established part of Japan's society, although most Japanese would rather not talk about it.

Now there is a chance to explore the world of the Yakuza through the eyes of someone who was not only part of that world but was born into it. The daughter of a local Yakuza boss, Tendo feels that the literal meaning of yakuza is "rooted in a territory, taking care of a territory" and that the Yakuza are akin to a closely knit family.

In elementary school, Tendo becomes aware that she is treated differently from other kids. Parents of her classmates tell their children to avoid playing with her. At school, she is bullied, called "that yakuza kid," and treated as an outcast.

One day while cleaning the classroom floor, Tendo hears a teacher say,"Shoko Tendo? She can draw, and maybe her basic reading is OK, but that's about it. There's not much you can teach an idiot like that."

The other teachers laugh, responding,"You're not kidding." Only then do they discover that Tendo has overheard them. They quickly change the subject and praise her for cleaning the classroom, teaching her early on about the Japanese practice of "tatemae" or being two-faced.

As she gets older, Tendo becomes a yanki, a slang term for kids who defy authority and cruise around town causing trouble. She starts sniffing glue and quickly moves on to speed, becoming an addict by the time she's twelve.

As a teen, she escapes a near- rape from one of her father's underlings and learns to avoid his associates. However she suffers beatings from older members of her gang who don't like her attitude and think she's namaiki--impertinent and needing to be taught a lesson. Trouble catches up with her. She is sent to a reform school but once she gets out she reverts to her old habits and her old friends.

During the bubble years of Japan's economy, Tendo becomes a nightclub hostess. In love with a customer who happens to be married and has no intention of leaving his wife, Tendo believes this man will eventually get a divorce. She realizes that this is not going to happen only after he tells her that his wife is pregnant.

With the death of her father, Tendo reacts by thinking about her future, working harder than ever at the nightclub, and saving money. She reaches her goal of ascending to the position of Number One hostess and then quits with the intention of becoming a writer.

A woman with no qualms about who she is or where she's from, Tendo tells an inspiring story of how she survived the Yakuza--and escaped it.

Her book has become a bestseller in Japan and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.