Jo Lusby got Penguin to bet US$100,000 on a Chinese dissident’s novel, and never looked back. Now she’s handling rights to a sci-fi hit When newly appointed Penguin China general manager Jo Lusby hosted her international bosses in Beijing for the first time, in 2005, she suggested the publishing executives meet the author of a then-bestselling book, Wolf Totem . On the face of it, a Chinese-language novel about wolves and shepherds written by a pseudonymous Beijing intellectual seemed unlikely to captivate an international audience.
But the writer, Jiang Rong, charmed the executives with his atmospheric descriptions, based loosely on his time spent on the Inner Mongolian grasslands working with nomadic shepherds and observing the behaviour of wolves. It was generally regarded as an allegorical work, and a thinly disguised criticism of the Cultural Revolution , which lasted from 1966-1976, a period that saw millions of people sent to work in the Chinese countryside, deprived of formal education. {"@context":"https://schema.
org","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"Lusby in 2008 during her days working at Penguin China. Photo: Ben McMillan","url":"https://cdn.i-scmp.
com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/06/27/b0345762-51b4-44d4-a8ce-d0c0c76abe32_8f53a9eb.jpg"} Lusby in 2008 during her days working at Penguin China. Photo: Ben McMillan Jiang, who was jailed twice – for his involvement in the Democracy Wall movement of 1979 and taking part in the Tiananmen Square demons.