Most Popular Books by Ha Jin

A New York Times Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year: Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Entertainment Weekly, Slate In A Free Life, Ha Jin follows the Wu family — father Nan, mother Pingping, and son Taotao — as they sever their ties with China in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square and begin a new life in the United States. As Nan takes on a number of menial jobs, eventually operating a restaurant with Pingping, he struggles to adapt to the American way of life and to hold his family together, even as he pines for a woman he loved and lost in his youth. Ha Jin''s prodigious talents are in full force as he brilliantly brings to life the struggles and successes of the contemporary immigrant experience.

National Book Award-winner Ha Jin''s arresting debut novel , In the Pond, is a darkly funny portrait of an amateur calligrapher who wields his delicate artist''s brush as a weapon against the powerful party bureaucrats who rule his provincial Chinese town. Shao Bin is a downtrodden worker at the Harvest Fertilizer Plant by day and an aspiring artist by night. Passed over on the list to receive a decent apartment for his young family, while those in favor with the party''s leaders are selected ahead of him, Shao Bin chafes at his powerlessness. When he attempts to expose his corrupt superiors by circulating satirical cartoons, he provokes an escalating series of merciless counterattacks that send ripples beyond his small community. Artfully crafted and suffused with earthy wit, In the Pond is a moving tale about humble lives caught up in larger social forces.

This is the second volume of poems from Chinese ex-patriot poet Ha Jin, who moved to the United States after the Tiananmen massacre. -- Amazon.com.

Poetry. Asian American Studies. New poems by the author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award. Ha Jin''s writing has been called luminous and eloquent by The New York Times Book Review, extraordinary by the Chicago Sun-Times and achingly beautiful by the Los Angeles Times. Asianweek calls him a master of lyric.

In the bold tradition of the “Misty Poets,” Ha Jin confronts China’s fraught political history while paying tribute to its rich culture and landscape. The poems of A Distant Center speak in a voice that is steady and direct, balancing contemplative longing with sober warnings from a writer who has confronted the traumas of censorship and state violence. With unadorned language and epigrammatic wit, Jin conjures scenes that encompass the personal, historical, romantic, and environmental, interrogating conceptions of foreignness and national identity as they appear and seep into everyday interactions and being. These are poems that offer solace in times of political reaction and uncertainty. Jin’s voice is wise, comforting, and imploring; his words are necessary and his lessons are invaluable. Question your place in the world—do not be complacent—look for strength and hope in every nook: “Keep in mind the meaning of / your existence: wherever you land, / your footprints will become milestones.”

In his first book of stories since The Bridegroom, National Book Award-winning author Ha Jin gives us a collection that delves into the experience of Chinese immigrants in America. A lonely composer takes comfort in the antics of his girlfriend''s parakeet; young children decide to change their names so they might sound more "American," unaware of how deeply this will hurt their grandparents; a Chinese professor of English attempts to defect with the help of a reluctant former student. All of Ha Jin''s characters struggle to remain loyal to their homeland and its traditions while also exploring the freedom that life in a new country offers. Stark, deeply moving, acutely insightful, and often strikingly humorous, A Good Fall reminds us once again of the storytelling prowess of this superb writer.

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • National Book Award Winner • Pulitzer Prize Finalist • A New York Times Notable Book From the widely acclaimed author—a rich and atmospheric novel about a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women. The demands of human longing contend with the weight of centuries of custom in acclaimed author Ha Jin’s Waiting, a novel of unexpected richness and universal resonance. Every summer Lin Kong, a doctor in the Chinese Army, returns to his village to end his loveless arranged marriage with the humble and touchingly loyal Shuyu. But each time Lin must return to the city to tell Manna Wu, the educated, modern nurse he loves, that they will have to postpone their engagement once again. Caught between the conflicting claims of these two utterly different women and trapped by a culture in which adultery can ruin lives and careers, Lin has been waiting for eighteen years. This year, he promises will be different. "Ha Jin profoundly understands the conflict between the individual and society, between the timeless universality of the human heart and constantly shifting politics of the moment. With wisdom, restraint, and empathy for all his characters, he vividly reveals the complexities and subtleties of a world and a people we desperately need to know."—Judges'' Citation, National Book Award

During the 1937 attack on Nanjing, American missionary and women''s college dean Minnie Vautrin decides to remain at her school during a violent Japanese attack that renders the school a refugee center for ten thousand women and children.

A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post, Los Angeles times, and San Jose Mercury News Best Book of the Year Ha Jin’s seismically powerful new novel is at once an unblinking look into the bell jar of communist Chinese society and a portrait of the eternal compromises and deceptions of the human state. When the venerable professor Yang, a teacher of literature at a provincial university, has a stroke, his student Jian Wan is assigned to care for him. Since the dutiful Jian plans to marry his mentor’s beautiful, icy daughter, the job requires delicacy. Just how much delicacy becomes clear when Yang begins to rave. Are these just the outpourings of a broken mind, or is Yang speaking the truth—about his family, his colleagues, and his life’s work? And will bearing witness to the truth end up breaking poor Jian’s heart? Combining warmth and intimacy with an unsparing social vision, The Crazed is Ha Jin’s most enthralling book to date.

Ha Jin’s masterful new novel casts a searchlight into a forgotten corner of modern history, the experience of Chinese soldiers held in U.S. POW camps during the Korean War. In 1951 Yu Yuan, a scholarly and self-effacing clerical officer in Mao’s “volunteer” army, is taken prisoner south of the 38th Parallel. Because he speaks English, he soon becomes an intermediary between his compatriots and their American captors.With Yuan as guide, we are ushered into the secret world behind the barbed wire, a world where kindness alternates with blinding cruelty and one has infinitely more to fear from one’s fellow prisoners than from the guards. Vivid in its historical detail, profound in its imaginative empathy, War Trash is Ha Jin’s most ambitious book to date.

"Mixing autobiography with invented other voices, this book is an extraordinary meditation on what it means to have lived the history of China in the second half of the twentieth century. At its best, Ha Jin''s language is as accessible, penetrating, and mysterious as Pound''s Cathay. This is a profound book, an event."—Frank Bidart "In these poems Ha Jin gives voice to the millions whose lives were altered and whose tongues were silenced by the Cultural Revolution. . . .If Ha Jin speaks in tongues in these poems, we feel him behind those voices—the hidden director behind the scenes—never as a presence filled with stridency and self-congratulation; he brings a great empathy and compassion to his depiction of the fallible men and women whose acts and attitudes together make up history."—Roger Gilbert, Hungry Mind Review

Novelist Ha Jin raises questions about language, migration, and the place of literature in a rapidly globalizing world. Consisting of three interconnected essays, The Writer as Migrant sets Ha Jin’s own work and life alongside those of other literary exiles, creating a conversation across cultures and between eras. He employs the cases of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Chinese novelist Lin Yutang to illustrate the obligation a writer feels to the land of their birth, while Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov—who, like Ha Jin, adopted English for their writing—are enlisted to explore a migrant author’s conscious choice of a literary language. A final essay draws on V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera to consider the ways in which our era of perpetual change forces a migrant writer to reconceptualize the very idea of home. Throughout, Jin brings other celebrated writers into the conversation as well, including W. G. Sebald, C. P. Cavafy, and Salman Rushdie—refracting and refining the very idea of a literature of migration. Simultaneously a reflection on a crucial theme and a fascinating glimpse at the writers who compose Ha Jin’s mental library, The Writer as Migrant is a work of passionately engaged criticism, one rooted in departures but feeling like a new arrival.

In his own time (701–762), Li Bai’s brilliant poems—shaped by Daoist thought, filled with an irrepressible lust for life—were never given their proper due. Nonetheless, his lines rang out on the lips of tavern singers, soldiers, and writers throughout the Tang dynasty, and his deep desire for a higher, more perfect world gave rise to his nickname: the Banished Immortal. With the instincts of a master novelist, Ha Jin draws on a wide range of historical and literary sources to weave the great poet’s life story, following Bai from his origins on the western frontier to his rambling travels as a young man. Jin also takes us through the poet’s later years—in which he became swept up in a military rebellion that altered the course of China’s history—and the mysterious circumstances of his death. Today, Bai’s verses remain an inextricable part of the Chinese language—taught to schoolchildren, recited at parties and toasts—and are famed throughout the world. The Banished Immortal is an extraordinary portrait of a poet who both transcended his time and was shaped by it, and whose ability to live, love, drink, dance, and mourn without reservation produced some of the world’s most enduring verses.

The winner of the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award for Fiction and three Pushcart Prizes presents twelve stories set during China''s Cultural Revolution, tales of moral degeneration and ideological cruelty that won the Flannery O''Connor Award for Short Fiction. UP.

From the universally admired, National Book Award-winning, bestselling author of Waiting—a timely novel that follows a famous Chinese singer severed from his country, as he works to find his way in the United States At the end of a U.S. tour with his state-supported choir, popular singer Yao Tian takes a private gig in New York to pick up some extra cash for his daughter’s tuition fund, but the consequences of his choice spiral out of control. On his return to China, Tian is informed that the sponsors of the event were supporters of Taiwan’s secession, and that he must deliver a formal self-criticism. When he is asked to forfeit his passport to his employer, Tian impulsively decides instead to return to New York to protest the government’s threat to his artistic integrity. With the help of his old friend Yabin, Tian’s career begins to flourish in the United States. But he is soon placed on a Chinese govu00adernment blacklist and thwarted by the state at every turn, and it becomes increasingly clear that he may never return to China unless he denounces the freedoms that have made his new life possible. Tian nevertheless insists on his identity as a performer, refusing to give up his art. Moving, important, and strikingly relevant to our times, A Song Everlasting is a story of hope in the face of hardship from one of our most celebrated authors.

Through the life of a remarkable woman—based on pioneering stage director Sun Weishi (1921–1968)—this epic novel immerses us in the multifaceted history of China’s Communist Party. A powerful, insightful account from the National Book Award–winning author, who came of age during the Cultural Revolution. As a promising young actress, Sun Weishi made the critical decision to pursue her studies in Moscow—with the blessing of her influential adoptive father, Zhou Enlai, and Mao himself. The valuable insights she gained there during World War II, most notably the significance of characters'' inner lives, would enable her to excel back in China, where she produced works by Chekhov and Gogol, and other socially progressive dramas, such as an adaptation of Uncle Tom''s Cabin. Her striking career as China''s first female director of modern spoken drama (Huaju) would be derailed with the advent of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, however, which put her once again at odds with an old enemy—Jiang Qing, a fellow actress who schemed her way to the top as Mao''s fourth and final wife. Through the decades-long rivalry between these two complex women, and their differing approaches to the men in power who shaped their lives, Ha Jin deftly explores the ideals of communism and the reality of the Chinese Communist Party. At the same time, the novel captivates us with Sun Weishi''s personal struggles and triumphs, as she navigates friendship, love, art, and politics amidst the great events of the twentieth century.

From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, a collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful. In the title story, the head of security at a factory is shocked, first when the hansomest worker on the floor proposes marriage to his homely adopted daughter, and again when his new son-in-law is arrested for the "crime" of homosexuality. In "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," the workers at an American-style fast food franchise receive a hilarious crash course in marketing, deep frying, and that frustrating capitalist dictum, "the customer is always right."Ha Jin has triumphed again with his unforgettable storytelling in The Bridegroom.

From the award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash: an urgent, timely novel that follows an aspiring author, an outrageous book idea, and a lone journalist’s dogged quest for truth in the Internet age. New York, 2005. Chinese expatriate Feng Danlin is a fiercely principled reporter at a small news agency that produces a website read by the Chinese diaspora around the world. Danlin’s explosive exposés have made him legendary among readers—and feared by Communist officials. But his newest assignment may be his undoing: investigating his ex-wife, Yan Haili, an unscrupulous novelist who has willingly become a pawn of the Chinese government in order to realize her dreams of literary stardom. Haili’s scheme infuriates Danlin both morally and personally—he will do whatever it takes to expose her as a fraud. But in outing Haili, he is also provoking her powerful political allies, and he will need to draw on all of his journalistic cunning to emerge from this investigation with his career—and his life—still intact. A brilliant, darkly funny story of corruption, integrity, and the power of the pen, The Boat Rocker is a tour de force of modern fiction.

A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year Lilian Shang, a history professor in Maryland, knew that her father, Gary, had been the most important Chinese spy ever caught in the United States. But when she discovers his diary after the death of her parents, its pages reveal the full pain and longing that his double life entailed—and point to a hidden second family that he’d left behind in China. As Lilian follows her father’s trail back into the Chinese provinces, she begins to grasp the extent of her father’s dilemma—torn between loyalty to his motherland and the love he came to feel for his adopted country. As she starts to understand that Gary, too, had been betrayed, she finds that it is up to her to prevent his tragedy from endangering yet another generation of the Shangs. A stunning portrait of a multinational family, an unflinching inquiry into the meaning of patriotism, A Map of Betrayal is a spy novel that only Ha Jin could write.

「忘記過去就等於背叛──」 美國國家書卷獎得主哈金長篇小說最高傑作 以真實人物為藍本。 一名潛伏範圍橫跨中國、美國、台灣的高級間諜。全書交錯史實和寫實主義小說寫作，從思想、行動、家庭到紅粉知己，層層揭露一名間諜的祕密與私情，正視「人的處境」，呈現出歷史時空下的道德難題。審視絕對忠誠背後盲目的愛國主義，及其所造就的寂寞與瘋狂。 中美間諜戰的起點。 一名潛伏在美國中情局最高層級的中國間諜， 在中美兩國與兩段家庭之間拉扯， 在難分難解的歷史糾葛中，一步步走向悲劇性的宿命── 莉蓮在母親過世一個月後，意外收到父親生前的情婦趙蘇西寄來數本日記，內容令她無比震驚。莉蓮所知道的父親，是數十年前美國所逮捕到中情局內部層級最高的中國間諜。這本日記不僅鉅細靡遺地記錄「蓋瑞．尚」為中國共產黨政府年復一年的情報工作，也揭露父親長期臥底在美國所承受的痛苦與思念──連莉蓮的母親奈麗都不知道，原來父親一直有個中國妻子，名叫劉玉?。為了找到素未謀面的家人，莉蓮依循日記上的線索走入中國內陸，往返間她逐漸體會父親當年在兩國夾縫中的悲慘處境：效忠祖國的同時，也漸漸在生根落地的新國度裡感受到真實的愛和依戀。莉蓮更發覺到，一步步淪為背叛者的父親，也是個被別人背叛的人，如今她將採取必要的手段，才能終止這場悲劇帶來更大的傷害…… 老實說，這是我最害怕的地方。 「愛兩個地方，同時也被兩個地方撕裂。」 「《背叛指南》有自己獨特的主題。這個故事比較集中地表現了個人與國家的矛盾。這個話題是當代中國文學最重要的主題。實際上，國家比普通人更容易犯錯誤，更可能橫行霸道，更會無視它的公民的利益和福祉。任何一個國家隨時都可能成為惡棍，都必須由它的公民精心地來管理和約束。二十幾年來，這個故事一直沉沉壓在我心底。由於本書備這樣一個重要的主題，它也許就有了硬朗的脊梁。」──哈金，作者自序 ■中文版十週年紀念新版■ 特別收錄作者新版序

Kültürel engelleri aşan basit bir aşk öyküsü.

突然，他成了一個瘋狂的人。 美國國家圖書獎得主哈金最震撼代表作。 這本小說是開端也是告別， 它標誌著我與中國的決裂。──哈金 一九八九年，萬堅在中國北方的山寧大學裡當研究生，某日他的指導教授楊慎民突然中風，與楊教授的女兒梅梅已訂下婚約的他，責無旁貸擔起照顧的責任。不過住院療養的楊教授行徑愈發詭異，時不時吟詩、唱起革命歌曲，大聲對著看不見的人求饒、抗議學校不公……這些究竟是精神崩潰下的胡言亂語，或者當中攙雜著不為人知的真話？ 本書主題是六四天安門事件，這是哈金人生的轉捩點。全書以第一人稱書寫，透過主角萬堅毫無矯飾的目光，寫出個人被集體瘋狂包圍並掐住喉頭的苦澀，及其對心靈所造成的巨大的破壞作用。哈金在序文中坦承最難寫的就是天安門事件的那一章，他視之為作家的道德責任。本書至今仍是書寫六四事件最具影響力的一本書，被譽為哈金最震撼也最令人著迷的不凡傑作。 「我要寫一部小說，把這些法西斯分子全寫進去。把他們釘在歷史的恥辱柱上。」 最令中共抓狂的一本書。 直視令人窒息的中國共產黨社會以及知識分子所遭受無止盡的妥協和騙局。 從個人對國家的盲目忠誠，寫到天安門廣場血腥鎮壓的凶暴，哈金筆下的萬堅就像卡夫卡小說裡的主角，愈努力愈挫敗。始於個人的瘋狂，結束於集體的瘋狂，《瘋狂》為魯迅筆下四千年來時時「吃人」的中國，在廿世紀後半中共政權為了保持自己的統治，不講道理，殺人如麻的凶暴行徑，留下最具影響力的批判和見證。 真是個瘋子！他讓我既想笑又想哭。 淚眼模糊。 「自從上了回來的火車，我就被一個可怕的幻象折磨著。我看見中國像一個老醜婆，衰朽又瘋狂，竟吞噬兒女來維持自己的生命。她貪得無厭，以前已吃掉許多小生命，現在又大嚼新血肉，將來肯定還要吃下去。我擺脫不了這個恐怖幻象，整天對自己說：「中國是吃自己的崽子的老母狗！」叫我怎能不毛骨悚然，叫我怎能不心驚肉跳！兩夜前的騷動還在我耳旁喧囂不止，我怕我就要瘋了。」 「天安門事件不僅僅使我們覺醒，也讓我們從此了斷了與國家的合同。 在更深的層次中，《瘋狂》寫的是這種民族的創傷和整個一代人的反叛。」 ──哈金，新版序 ．繁體中文二十週年紀念新版。香港知名詩人黃燦然翻譯。 ．特別收錄新版作者序

Una llegada inesperada y otros relatos ofrece por vez primera en español una selección de trece cuentos de uno de los más prestigiosos escritores de ficción en lengua inglesa de nuestros días. Haciendo gala de un estilo directo, desprovisto de sentimentalismo y con un sutilísimo sentido del humor, Ha Jin nos hace partícipes, de dos experiencias vitales que han marcado su historia personal: la situación de desvalimiento del individuo ante la omnipresencia del Estado opresor en la China de Mao y la experiencia migratoria, con sus aspiraciones, dificultades y frustraciones. A través de mi escritura intento presentar una nación... aquella del sufrimiento humano. Si es literatura debe tener un significado universal, que sea reconocible por todos . Los relatos breves de Ha Jin han sido objeto de los más prestigiosos premios y reconocimientos literarios internacionales, tales como el Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award por Ocean of Words, el Flannery O''Connor Award por Under the Red Flag y el Asian American Literary Award por The Bridegroom.

Lin Kong é um médico na China da década de 1960. TOdo ano ele volta à aldeia de Ganso para tentar se divorciar da mulher, Shuyu, e assim ficar disponível para se casar com Manna Wu, jovem enfermeira do hospital onde trabalha. DUrante dezoito anos, Lin Kong tenta em vão: na última hora, sua mulher sempre desiste de lhe conceder a separação. DUrante dezoito anos, ele e Manna Wu mantêm um relacionamento sem contato corporal - e é durante essa espera que transcorre a maior parte do romance. LEal ao extremo, feia, pés atados, Shuyu - com quem o médico se casou por arranjo entre famílias - encarna a China rural, arcaica; arrasta consigo um tipo de vida tacanha de que Lin Kong quer se livrar. MAnna Wu, por sua vez, representa a China urbana e a possibilidade (que ele julgava descartada) de conhecer o amor.O Medo da solidão, as armadilhas da honestidade, a fragilidade dos vínculos familiares, a força da internalização das normas sociais e a inexistência de privacidade numa sociedade vigiada são temas explorados com rara sensibilidade por Ha Jin - um chinês que, escrevendo em inglês, obteve uma das honrarias literárias mais prestigiosas dos Estados Unidos: o National Book Award.