War Trash
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...
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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.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780375422768 (0375422765)
Publish date: October 5th 2004
Publisher: Pantheon
Pages no: 368
Edition language: English
Category:
Novels,
Literature,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Adult Fiction,
Historical Fiction,
War,
Military,
Asian Literature,
Asia,
China
This book is the "memoir" of the experiences of Yu Yuan, former student at the Huangpu Military Academy, during the Korean War, most of which he spends imprisoned by the Americans. Actually, you might say "during the Chinese civil war", because the effects of that conflict are everywhere. You might ...
Maybe this sounds contradictory to what I wrote before, but I am giving this book 5 stars. How do you call a book a "favorite" when the story told is so thoroughly horrible. This book is more memoir than historical fiction. Names had to be changed! First of all this is about a war and primarily is f...
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