2007年「亞洲文學獎」得主姜戎的《狼圖騰》是近年在大陸文壇上最受矚目的創作之一。作品中交纏糾結的對自然、文化、地理、歷史的想像與政治話語，是本文的探討焦點。透過對其文學類型、異族想像、個人記憶與歷史敍述的分析，本文試圖提出一些與目前評論不同的閱讀可能，探討它在當代大陸文學／文化發展脈絡裏所扮演的角色以及社會意義。本文認為《狼圖騰》深具代表性，特別是在這個所謂的「中國崛起」的年代，它在很大程度上反射了中國菁英知識分子在對「現代民族」的想像與再建構上，與當前中國國家大敍述的密切互動關係。

The winner of the first Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007, Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem, has received enormous attention in China in recent years. Its interlocking imaginaries of nature, culture, geography and history as well as its political discourse are the focus of investigation in this article. Dealing with topics of genre, ethnicity, memory and historical representation, this article reads Wolf Totem in ways that differ from most of those in the current discussions of the work. It attempts to examine the role of Wolf Totem within the context of recent development of mainland Chinese literature and cultural discourses, and to explore the social implications of the work. This article argues that Wolf Totem is highly representative of a present-day intellectual discourse in its imagination and reconstruction of the “modern nation” and its negotiation with the grand narrative of Chinese subjectivity especially in this era in which China is said to “have risen.”