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Start giftingThe Bridegroom
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Learn moreFrom the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, comes this collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful.
In the title story, the head of security at a factory is shocked, first when the handsomest worker on the floor proposes marriage to his homely adopted daughter and again when his new son-in-law is arrested for the “crime” of homosexuality.
In “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town,” the workers at an American-style fast-food franchise receive a hilarious crash course in marketing, deep frying, and that frustrating capitalist dictum, “the customer is always right.”
Ha Jin has triumphed again with his unforgettable storytelling in The Bridegroom.
Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of eight novels, four story collections, a book of essays, and six books of poetry. He received the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the Flannery O’Connor Award, among others. His novel War Trash was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2014 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is director of the creative writing program at Boston University.
Feodor Chin, an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor classically trained at the American Conservatory Theater and UCLA. His acting career includes numerous credits in film, television, theater, and voice-over.
Reviews
“[Ha Jin’s] his eye for detail, his great storytelling talent—these universal gifts suffuse his work and make The Bridegroom a genuine pleasure.“
“Showcases [Ha Jin’s] mastery of craft, the consummate restraint, and nearly telegraphic objectivity with which he paints difficult truths.”
“Finely wrought…Every story here is cut like a stone.”
“It’s difficult to think of another writer who has captured the conflicting attitudes and desires, and the still-changing conditions of daily life, of post–Cultural Revolution China as well as Ha Jin does in his second collection, which follows his NBA-winning novel, Waiting. These twelve stories attain their significant cumulative effect through spare prose penetrated by wit, insight and a fine sense of irony…Ha Jin has a rare empathy for people striving to balance the past and the future while caught on the cusp of change.”
“Jin uses this collection to exhibit his strong writing and storytelling skills with his laconic use of words. Recommended for most larger public, academic, and Asian literature collections.”
“The cultural and economic consequences of capitalism vs. communism are dramatized in unforgettably human terms in this brilliant third collection of twelve stories.”
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