February 17, 2019
Author’s Bio
Although he writes in Chinese, Guo Xuebo (郭雪波) is fiercely proud of his Mongolian heritage and was raised in Inner Mongolia’s Khorchin Grasslands (Hure Banner). Now 71 and bilingual, he spoke Mongolian at home and school until he was 13. He graduated from Beijing’s prestigious Central
Academy of Drama (Department of Literature and Drama) in 1980, and in the same year, passed the entrance exam to Hohhot’s Institute of Literature under the Inner Mongolia Academy of Social Sciences. Since 1984, he has held the post of Assistant Researcher at this institute, undertaking research in various aspects of Mongolian history, culture and drama.
In 2018, he participated in Symposium – Space to Speak: Non-Han Fiction and Film in China and Beyond, held at the University of Leeds in the UK. As a popular indigenous author of borderland fiction and scholar of Mongolian culture and history, over the years he has frequently been invited overseas. In 2004, he took part in France’s Salon du Livre as a member of the China Writers Association delegation. He attended the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair when China was the Country of Honor, participated in literary salons in Munich and Düsseldorf, and was interviewed by Deutsche Welle in Bonn. He delivered a speech, The Mongols: Religion, Culture & Nature Worship, at Canada’s University of Waterloo in 2016, and was invited as visiting scholar by New Zealand’s University of Auckland, where he delivered a lecture on Mongolian folk culture in 2017.
Major Works, Motifs & Awards
Guo Xuebo is a prolific writer who has published seven novels including Moŋgoliya (《蒙古里亚》2014), over a dozen collections of novellas and short stories, and authored three screenplays for Chinese-language films, including those based on his novel Wolf Child(《大漠狼孩》a best-seller in China) and short story Desert Fox (《沙狼》translated into several languages).
Foreign Language Editions
A collection of 4 of his short stories (The Desert Wolf, The Sand Fox, Sand Rites, Sand Burial) has been published in English (The Desert Fox), French (La renarde du désert), Japanese (砂漠の物語) and German (bilingual). Several 
of his novels are currently in translation, including The Wolf Child (Korean), and Hero of Inner Mongolia, Gada Meiren (《青旗·嘎达梅林》Mongolian). An excerpt from his novel Moŋgoliya, The Mongol Would-be Self-immolator, has been published online by Asia-Pacific Journal.
His writing strongly reflects his upbringing in the grasslands of northern China and his Mongolian roots and culture. Themes include wildlife on the steppe and in the desert, often recounted from an animal’s perspective; animism, and the role of Shaman as both a spiritual mediator and a community leader; and the history of interaction — and sometimes violent friction — between the indigenous Mongolian herders, the ruling Manchu during the Qing dynasty, and the Han who came to exploit the land as miners and sedentary farmers.
Guo Xuebo’s fiction has won significant recognition outside mainland China. His Desert Fox was chosen for inclusion in a volume of short stories, part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works (a translation project, 1948-2005). His novella, The Desert Soul, won Taiwan’s United Daily News 18th Literature Prize, and his novella, Stepfather, was awarded the Religious Literature Prize co-sponsored by Taiwan’s Central Daily News and Ling Jiou Mountain Buddhist Society.
For a one-stop view of Guo Xuebo’s published works in Chinese, visit douban (豆瓣).
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Bruce Humes 