Defiant, unyielding, feared, hunted and revered, the great Mongolian wolf is the heart and center of Jiang Rong's epic tale of a young man from Beijing and his encounters in this strange, ancient world on the Mongolian steppe. Winner of the first Man Asia Prize and hugely popular in China, it's a stirring epic, allegory and elegy for a vanished way of life with the emotional punch of Arseniev's Dersu the Trapper (SIB24, $16.00). Sent to Olonbulag in the 1969 during the cultural revolution, Rong spent ten year's living among the nomads of north-central Inner Mongolia.  (CHN471, $26.95)

Best of 2008