Ha Jin

For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. Every summer, he returns to ask her for a divorce and every summer his compliant wife agrees but then backs out.

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 exposes 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.Hailis scheme infuriates Danlin both morally and personallyhe 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 come out of this investigation with his careerand his lifeunscathed. A brilliant, darkly funny story of corruption, integrity, and the power of the pen, The Boat Rocker is a tour de force.

Ha Jin reúne los diferentes hilos del exilio, los diversos modos de enfrentarse a la migración, en una reflexión brillante y aguda que tiene mucho que ver con el futuro de la literatura.Tomando como punto de partida su propia experiencia personal (su paso del ejercito chino durante la Revolucion Cultural a su puesto de profesor en la Universidad de Chicago) se acerca a otros exilios literarios en busca de puntos en comun y discrepancias segun lugares y epocas. Ha Jin toma a Alexander Solzhenitsyn y Lin Yutang como ejemplos del sentimiento de obligacion del escritor hacia su pais natal, mientras Joseph Conrad y Vladimir Nabokov actuan como ejemplos de escritores que decidieron adoptar el ingles como lengua literaria. Finalmente, V. S. Naipaul y Milan Kundera ilustran el modo que nuestro tiempo de cambios constantes obliga a los escritores a reconsiderar la idea de patria. Por el camino, Sebald o Cavafis le ayudan a matizar la idea de inmigracion.

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.

Una hermosa metáfora de un microcosmos social.En contraste con los postulados del supuesto paraíso maoísta, Shoa Bin, que trabaja en la fábrica de una comuna, se ve obligado a vivir con su familia en una incomoda habitacion. Tras seis años esperando un piso, su decepcion es mayuscula cuando ve que el director de la fabrica otorga ese privilegio a trabajadores menos cualificados. Shao Bin toma entonces una arriesgada decision...

In his first book of stories since The Bridegroom was published in 2000 ("Finely wrought . . . Every story here is cut like a stone."—Chicago Sun-Times), National Book Award-winning Ha Jin gives us a collection that delves into the experience of Chinese immigrants in America. With the same profound attention to detail that is a hallmark of his previous acclaimed works of fiction, Ha Jin depicts here the full spectrum of immigrant life and the daily struggles—some minute, some grand—faced by these intriguing individuals. A lonely composer takes comfort in the antics of his girlfriend's parakeet; young children decide to change their names so that 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 in situations that stir within them a desire to remain attached to be loyal to their homeland and its traditions as they explore and avail themselves of the freedom that life in a new country offers. In these stark, deeply moving, acutely insightful, and often strikingly humorous stories, we are reminded once again of the storytelling prowess of this superb writer.

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. "

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 sutilisimo sentido del humor, Ha Jin nos hace participes, de dos experiencias vitales que han marcado su historia personal: la situacion 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 traves de mi escritura intento presentar una nacion... 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 mas 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.

A Ph.D. candidate at a Chinese university tends the bedside of one of his professors, who is also his girlfriend's father and who in his illness and delirium rants about his past: his counterrevolutionary activities, his adulterous affairs, his dissatisfaction with his scholarly career. Inspired by the old man, the student gives up his own ambitions--and becomes one of the protestors in Tiananmen Square. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

In a small town in China, Shao Bin is feeling his powerlessness when he is denied a larger apartment, and his solution is to publish a satire in the local newspaper--an act whose repercussions go far beyond what he had expected. IN THE POND is the first novel by Ha Jin, who received the National Book Award in 1999.

For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in his traditional home village lives the humble, loyal wife his family chose for him years ago. Every summer, he returns to ask her for a divorce and every summer his compliant wife agrees but then backs out. This time, after eighteen years waiting, Lin promises it will be different.

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 sutilisimo sentido del humor, Ha Jin nos hace participes, de dos experiencias vitales que han marcado su historia personal: la situacion 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 traves de mi escritura intento presentar una nacion... 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 mas 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.

One of The New Yorkers Best Books of the YearA Harvard student from China discovers the fraught, hidden history of the Tiananmen Square massacre in this powerful novel of protest and suppression from the National Book Awardwinning author.When the Chinese premier visits Harvard, international student Pei Lulu encounters a lone protester, who will drastically change her understanding of the Peoples Republic and her own place in the world. For the first time, Lulu learns of the 1989 protest movement and the governments violent response. Determined to find out more, she seeks answers from her family, who share surprising stories of their involvement, and from a formative university course based on powerful firsthand accounts.At once a compelling coming-of-age tale and a poignant tribute to the courage of activists, Looking for Tank Man keeps this tragedy alive in the public memory and warns against the dangers of authoritarian regimes.

A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the YearFrom the award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash: a riveting tale of espionage and conflicted loyalties that spans half a century in the entwined histories of two countriesChina and the United Statesand two families. When Lilian Shang, born and raised in America, discovers her fathers diary after the death of her parents, she is shocked by the secrets it contains. She knew that her father, Gary, convicted decades ago of being a mole in the CIA, was the most important Chinese spy ever caught. But his diary, an astonishing chronicle of his journey as a Communist intelligence agent, reveals the pain and longing that his double life entailedand point to a hidden second family that hed left behind in China. As Lilian follows her fathers trail back into the Chinese provinces, she begins to grasp the extent of his dilemma: he is a man torn between loyalty to his motherland and the love he came to feel for his adopted country. She sees how his sense of duty distorted his life, and as she starts to understand that Gary too had been betrayed, Lilian finds that it is up to her to prevent his tragedy from endangering yet another generation of Shangs. A stunning portrait of a multinational family and an unflinching inquiry into the meaning of citizenship, patriotism, and home, A Map of Betrayal is a spy novel that only Ha Jin could write.

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 journalists 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. Danlins explosive exposes have made him legendary among readersand 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.Hailis scheme infuriates Danlin both morally and personallyhe 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 careerand his lifestill 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.