Fifteen years after arriving in the United States, Ha Jin found himself under the American literary spotlight when his second novel, Waiting, became the first to receive both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. In The Bridegroom Jin employs the same spare, elegant style to great success – three of the twelve stories in this collection were selected for Best American Short Stories. Jin is now recognized as one of the greatest chroniclers of contemporary Chinese society, which has for decades been working through a deep and unsettling transition. The Bridegroom's title story is narrated by a guardian struggling to come to terms with his otherwise model son-in-law, who has been arrested, institutionalized, and given electric baths for the "bourgeois, Western crime" of being homosexual. The collection also includes stories about academics, fast-food workers, an amnesiac, and a deluded, tiger-fighting actor. Each of these characters is shaped by personal experience as well as social order. As in Waiting, all of these stories take place in Mu Jin and together form an insightful exploration of the human heart, as well as a detailed, thought-provoking portrait of a culture in turmoil. Lilus, Powells.com

Praise for Waiting
Winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award

"A simple love story that transcends cultural barriers. Convincing and rich in detail, [it is] filled with an earthy poetic grace."
--Chicago Tribune

"Waiting has the stripped down simplicity of a fable. It casts a spell that doesn't break once. Jin has the kind of effortless command that most writers can only dream about."
--New York Times Magazine

"A high achievement indeed."
--Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books

"Achingly beautiful. Ha Jin depicts the details of social etiquette, of food, of rural family relationships and the complex yet alarmingly primitive fabric of provincial life with that absorbed passion for minutiae characteristic of Dickens and Balzac."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Luminous [and] eloquent. [Waiting] provides a crash course in
Chinese society during and since the Cultural Revolution, and a more leisurely but nonetheless compelling exploration of the less
exotic terrain that is the human heart."
--Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review

"[A] suspenseful and bracingly tough-minded love story.
Poignantly allegorical."
--The New Yorker

"Extraordinary. A remarkably austere love story, suffused with irony and subtlety. Reminiscent of Hemingway in its scope, simplicity and precise language. A vivid bit of storytelling, fluid and earthy, [it is] a graceful human allegory."
--Chicago Sun-Times

Saboteur — Alive — In the kindergarten — A tiger fighter is hard to find — Broken — The bridegroom — An entrepreneur's story — Flame — A bad joke — An official reply — The woman from New York — After Cowboy Chicken came to town.