Set in China’s 21st-century Inner Mongolia, the novel is a semi-autobiographical tale by Guo Xuebo (郭雪波), a Mongol who grew up speaking the language of his people. It comprises three distinct but intertwined narratives: A spiritual journey, in which the narrator — ostensibly the author — seeks his Shamanic roots, long obscured in post-1949, officially atheist China; vignettes from the Mongolian adventures of Henning Haslund-Christensen, born to a Danish missionary family in the Chahar grasslands in 1896, and real-life author of the anthropological masterpiece Men and Gods in Mongolia; and the tribulations of Teelee Yesu, a modern-day fictional Mongol herdsman, considered by many to be the village idiot, whose very survival is threatened by desertification and the machinations of a coal mining company that covets the traditional pastures of the Mongols.

This excerpt from Mongolia (蒙古里亚) treats comically two taboo topics almost never mentioned in Chinese news reports or fiction: The exploitation of traditional Mongolian pasture lands by ruthless coal mining firms, and the use of self-immolation by China’s ethnic minorities to protest government policies aimed at acculturation.