© Columbia University Press
The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan
September, 2008
Cloth, 304 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14616-6
$29.50
Inoue Yasushi was a prolific Japanese writer best known for his sweeping historical epics. In The Blue Wolf, the novelist imagines the life of Chinggis Khan, the famed warrior who established the Mongol nation and conquered nearly all of Asia. Inoue probes the darkest corners of Chinggis's soul, piecing together a psychological portrait of this "lone wolf" from the materials of myth and history (relying largely on The Secret History of the Mongols [1227], written shortly after the khan's death). Focusing on the relationship between Chinggis and his father and the warrior's obsession with his true paternity, Inoue drives at the root of the khan's grand ambitions and insatiable appetite for supremacy.
Inoue begins with Chinggis's youth and the alliances that helped him achieve tribal unity. Having consolidated Mongol power, Chinggis could now wage his great campaigns against the cities of North China, Bukhara, and Samarkand, as well as the state of Khorazm. Throughout his battles and victories, Chinggis remained haunted by the question of his ancestry, wondering whether he was truly the descendent of the blue wolf (progenitor of the Mongols and the noble Borjigin line) or merely the bastard son of a Merkid tribesman. In this novel, this anxiety is the central force that drives the khan's endless push for empire, the material proof that he is both a brave warrior and a true Mongol. It is also the largest wedge separating him from his eldest son, Jochi, a boy born in captivity and therefore of similarly questionable heritage. The Blue Wolf is widely considered to be one of Inoue's most sophisticated novels, and this translation remains faithful to the dark subtlety of the original tale.