Ha Jin

Ha Jin (born 21 February 1956), pen name of Jin Xuefei, is a Chinese-born American novelist, short story writer, and poet who writes exclusively in English — a language he did not begin learning until his late teens — and whose fiction, set primarily in China during and after the Cultural Revolution, has won virtually every major American literary prize: the National Book Award for Waiting (1999), the PEN/Faulkner Award for War Trash (2004), and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Ocean of Words (1996). He is one of the most remarkable linguistic phenomena in contemporary literature: a writer who produces fiction in English of such clarity and power that native speakers frequently express disbelief that it is the work of a non-native writer.

Life

Ha Jin was born in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province, China. His father was a military officer. During the Cultural Revolution, he served in the People’s Liberation Army from the age of fourteen, spending six years on the border with the Soviet Union. After Mao’s death, he studied English at Heilongjiang University and then American literature at Shandong University, where he completed an M.A.

In 1985, he came to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. at Brandeis University. The Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 — which occurred while he was in America — convinced him that he could not return to China and that he would write in English rather than Chinese. He has described this decision as both liberating and agonising: writing in English freed him from Chinese censorship but cut him off from his natural audience.

He has taught at Emory University and Boston University.

Waiting (1999)

Ha Jin’s most acclaimed novel tells the story of Lin Kong, a Chinese military doctor who waits eighteen years to divorce his wife — a peasant woman in an arranged marriage — so that he can marry the nurse he loves. Chinese military regulations require that a husband wait eighteen years before divorcing without his wife’s consent. The novel’s power lies in its extraordinary patience: it follows Lin through nearly two decades of waiting, watching desire calcify into habit and hope decay into resignation.

Waiting won the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Its prose is spare, controlled, and quietly devastating — Ha Jin writes about frustration, compromise, and the slow erosion of love with a Chekhovian restraint.

War Trash (2004)

Ha Jin’s second major novel follows Yu Yuan, a Chinese soldier captured during the Korean War and held in a United Nations prisoner-of-war camp, where Chinese and Taiwanese factions fight for control of the prisoners. The novel — based on extensive historical research — explores the horrors of captivity, the politics of repatriation, and the betrayal of individuals by the political systems they serve. It won the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Short Stories

Ha Jin’s short story collections are among his finest work. Ocean of Words (1996) — stories of Chinese soldiers on the Soviet border — won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Under the Red Flag (1997) — stories of life during the Cultural Revolution — won the Flannery O’Connor Award. The Bridegroom (2000) — stories of contemporary Chinese life — includes the title story about a factory worker whose son-in-law is arrested for homosexuality.

A Free Life (2007)

Ha Jin’s most ambitious novel follows a Chinese immigrant family in America — the Wus — as they build a new life running a Chinese restaurant in suburban Atlanta. It is Ha Jin’s first novel set entirely in the United States and his most directly autobiographical, exploring the loneliness, freedom, and identity crisis of the immigrant writer.

Critical Standing

Ha Jin occupies a unique position in American letters: a Chinese-born writer who has chosen English as his literary language and who writes about China with the distance and clarity that exile provides. His prose style — simple, precise, emotionally restrained — has been compared to Chekhov, Isaac Bashevis Singer (another writer who chose to work in an adopted language), and early Hemingway.

Collecting Ha Jin

Waiting (1999, Pantheon) in first edition brings $20–$60. Ocean of Words (1996, Zoland Books) in first edition brings $30–$80. War Trash (2004) brings $15–$40.