Ha Jin,This is his pen name. His real name is Jin Xuefei the award-winning novelist, was born in north China, served in the People’s Liberation Army, studied English literature in college and then arrived at Brandeis University, near Boston, to study for his PhD. He made several fateful decisions shortly after arriving here in the 1980s: he would write primarily in his second language, English, and he would speak out publicly about what he viewed as the injustices and abuses of the government of his native country. One of those decisions, to write in English, resulted in a series of acclaimed novels, including “Waiting,” winner of the 1999 National Book Award, and “War Trash,” a 2005 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. The other, fashioning himself a dissident, has effectively barred him from returning to mainland China. What follows is an edited transcript of our talk, this past summer.
Ha Jin
Illustration by Lauren Crow
You have often said that you gravitate
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