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45th out of 56 books
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Ocean of Words: Stories
by
Ha Jin
Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award
The place is the chilly border between Russia and China. The time is the early 1970s when the two giants were poised on the brink of war. And the characters in this thrilling collection of stories are Chinese soldiers who must constantly scrutinize the enemy even as they themselves are watched for signs of the fatal disease of bourgeois lib...more
The place is the chilly border between Russia and China. The time is the early 1970s when the two giants were poised on the brink of war. And the characters in this thrilling collection of stories are Chinese soldiers who must constantly scrutinize the enemy even as they themselves are watched for signs of the fatal disease of bourgeois lib...more
Paperback, 224 pages
Published
July 28th 1998
by Vintage
(first published 1996)
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I didn't love this one but it is definitely worth reading. A series of short stories, told from the point of view of a Chinese soldier stationed on the Russian border during the 1970s (Author may have actually been stationed there at about this time - before he left for the US and became an Emory prof)Stories complicate our stereotypical understanding of the Cultural Revolution. Told from the standpoint not of the intelligentsia but of peasants, also concerned with demonstrating they are not c...more
Ha Jin the author of Waiting also shows a create use of mutiple short stories in one book. He discuss the hardships that soldiers had faced during that time between the Russians and the Chinese.
Each chapter discuss how each soldier feel and interact with certain things during the war. The war brought many hardships and problem to many people. There were also corrupted government officials that lead people into the wrong path. Each story is unfold in a way that describes an event o...more
Each chapter discuss how each soldier feel and interact with certain things during the war. The war brought many hardships and problem to many people. There were also corrupted government officials that lead people into the wrong path. Each story is unfold in a way that describes an event o...more
I picked this up at random at the library and am glad I did. The stories are interesting and take me to a place and time remote from my own. At the same time they don't feel foreign at all. There is a little bit of moralizing about the cultural revolution but for the most part it's not heavy handed and the stories are about the people involved rather than about politics. I would definitely like to read a novel by Ha Jin.
The style of the writing didn't wow me. I would also say I ...more
The style of the writing didn't wow me. I would also say I ...more
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An impressive collection of stories, all set among Red Army troops stationed along the Russian border. The stories are told in a deceptively modest style (deceptive in the sense that there doubtless was a tremendous amount of editing and whittling-down that went into these stories' making), and they range in tone from the comic to the brutal. Jin is able to evoke ambiguous psychological states, subtle relationships, and bleak landscapes in prose that never shows off or calls attention to itsel...more
I didn't find this collection of short stories notable for an overarching storyline or beautiful prose, but it gave a valuable glimpse into the lives of young men on the front lines in Cold War China. Another testament to how important words, and who controls the words, are.
a wonderful collection of short stories set on the russia/china border during the 1970s. all told from the perspective of soldiers in the chinese army, what was most intriguing to me was how familiar their thinking and motivations were with my own.
Interestign perspective on a perverted period of Chinese history. I like this writer and his style--very engaging, I thought. The story is an eye opener about this time and I has a feeling of "being there".
Although I did not read all of the stories in the book, the ones I did read I really enjoyed. The prose was beautiful and I found the stories of those living in the opressive world of communist China fascinating.
Another good collection of short stories, this time dealing with the all too human PLA on the Russian border during the 1970s...A great companion book to Ha Jin's 'War Trash.'
One of the better short short collections I have read. Ha Jin has a talent of finding the humanity in the most impersonal of bureaucratic constructs.
Half stars because I've only just begun. They are short stories exquisitely written.
Excellent writing as always but I wasn't that engaged by any of the stories.
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Ha Jin is the pen name of Xuefei Jin, a novelist, poet, short story writer, and Professor of English at Boston University. Ha Jin writes in English about China, a political decision post-Tiananmen Square.
More about Ha Jin...
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