Letter from Beijing: A book about wolves on the Mongolian Steppes has taken China by storm.
It's been serialised on the radio, wolfish eyes stare at you from placards in airports, management seminars are quoting it, there's even a children's version on the way - and an English translation.
But it's just a book about wolves, surely? To some of the millions of people who have read the runaway Chinese best-seller Wolf Totem, the book is a clarion call for more national pride in China.
Other readers see its central message - that Chinese people must learn from the wolves of the Inner Mongolian Steppes - as a guide for business tactics in the New China. Its fans in the army see it as a book of military strategy, while others see it as an ecological blueprint.
A publishing sensation it may be, but it's an unlikely one.
Nearly 400 pages of stories about wolves interspersed with arcane history lessons about Mongolian gods and Chinese ruling dynasties, it's not exactly Harry Potter, but it's the must-read book in China these days, given out as a Chinese New Year gift by big corporations and army generals alike.
Wolf Totem was published anonymously, the work of a reclusive academic called Jiang Rong, who teaches economics at a Beijing university but who shuns publicity.
So what's the secret? Why has the book touched such a deep nerve in China?
"Everyone has wolf characteristics, such as courage, but we've lost these feelings in our modern society," says An Boshun, an editor at the book's publishers Yangtze River Culture Publishing House and a friend of the author.
"After reading this book, many people feel they should be more like wolves. It's simple.
"On the surface, it's about wolves but it's also about Chinese culture. Many people see a profound meaning in the book. The wolf and the dragon, two sides of Chinese culture," he says, referring to a central idea in the book that China's "dragon", or imperial and dictatorial culture has made the Han people cowardly, or - literally - sheepish.
The publishers do three or four reprints a month of the book, which has sold nearly 700,000 official copies. However, there are around four million pirate copies out there, by their estimation, once you factor in pirate copies and the numbers of people downloading the book from the internet, where it is widely available.
At times preachy, often wordy and generally sentimental, its appeal is obscure.
"Before I published this book I invited journalists and literary experts to read it and they all said it wouldn't sell. They were puzzled, but I always knew it would succeed. The reason is that the theme is freedom - that guarantees success," says An.
An is an engaging man who speaks of the book with a truly evangelical zeal. Jiang Rong had been a friend of his for 10 years and he wrote the book on An's encouragement.
Like many other Communist intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, the author went to the countryside - in his case to the Gobi in the province of Inner Mongolia in 1967, where he ended up getting very close to the packs of wolves which roam the wide grasslands there.
Back in the late 1960s, local Mongolian farmers still led a nomadic lifestyle, roaming the steppes with their sheep and cows, in harmony with nature. They both loved and hated the wolves, which would attack them and their livestock, but were also their objects of worship.
The hero of the book, Chen Zhen, is forced into fighting against wolves to protect his life. He sees a group of Mongolian women and children fighting off a giant wolf, the size of a leopard, which is trying to steal their sheep.
He adopts a wolf cub and he learns a lot about its true nature from it and he also achieves spiritual inspiration from Mongolian religious rituals based around the wolf.
"Chen" - in reality, Jiang - returned to Beijing in 1978 but he only decided to write the book much later, on An's prompting. It took him six years to finish.
The author argues that the wolf's tactics were adopted by the armies of the 13th century Mongol hordes, led by Genghis Khan, whose armies conquered a huge part of Asia and Europe, getting as far as Vienna.
"Genghis Khan learned how to ambush from wolves, how to move fast on grass, how to use the weather and geographical advantage," An says.
"The freedom expressed in this book is very different from the kind you read about in a history book or a law textbook. It's about our instinct, our nature. You see the courage and the deeds of the wolves, it's innate."
The book was broadcast by Beijing People's Radio at noon and 10 pm every day for 100 days and proved extremely popular.
The reviews have been ecstatic. Zhang Ruimin, chief executive of the Haier white- goods company, said: "I feel that we can learn a lot of incredible strategies from the wolves," while the literature critic and author Zhou Tao said the book was "magical".
"It is a great book that makes us rethink the philosophy of the nomadic people through the description of the life of the wolves. It also showed our courage to face our own weaknesses," he said.
An believes the book defies categorisation and defies comparison.
He says it appeals to women, because they want their men to be more like wolves, to MBA students who want to learn more wolfishness in business and, inevitably, to resurgent Chinese nationalists who think it's time that China was strong again.
"I know that many scholars and professionals all believe China should become strong. In the past 100 years China has been bullied by other countries, like Japan, during the second World War. Many believe that now is the time for China to become strong. We can't forget history and must stop it repeating itself." On internet chat sites, the book is hotly debated.
There are those who think the book misses the point: "Like many other nations, the Chinese lack love, not a totem! What we lack is the worship of truth. If we should worship anything, it should be the creator of the world. There is no need to argue about the dragon versus the wolf."
Others are more enthusiastic: "The Chinese nation badly needs the spirit of the wolf. We need to change our blood and inspire our spirit in order to make progress."
Still others muddy the waters somewhat by bringing in other animals: "We don't need wolf characteristics, we should be more like an elephant, mild and strong."
An says that the main reason the book is successful is because it shows how, in modern society, nature has been suppressed.
"This book is about awakening that spirit within us. Not just Chinese people love this story; everyone will love it. They'll all love the animal virtues expressed in this book."
