The Stay-In Weather Sale: 20% off select books
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Award Winners
    • Signed Preorders
    • Signed Editions
    • Digital Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • Book Club Subscriptions
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts + Gift Cards
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Read Rise Resist Gear
    • Journals & Notebooks
    • Games
    • Socks
  • Sell Books
    • Sell Books Online
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store
McAfee Secure

Don't Miss

  • Looking Forward Sale
  • The Stay-In Weather Sale
  • Kids' Graphic Novels Sale
  • Our 2021 TBR List
  • Books That Got Us Through 2020
  • Save 20% on OBOB Books

Visit Our Stores


Emily B.: Inauguration Reading List: 10 Books for 100 Days (0 comment)
We have put together a reading list based on President-elect Biden's publicized policy goals for his first 100 days in office...
Read More»
  • Rhianna Walton: Powell's Interview: Chang-rae Lee, author of 'My Year Abroad' (0 comment)
  • Jeremy Garber: New Literature in Translation: January 2021 Edition (1 comment)

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

Waiting

by Ha Jin
Waiting

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Reading Group Guide
  • Award Excerpt
  • Read an Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780375706417
ISBN10: 0375706410
Condition: Standard


All Product Details

View Larger ImageView Larger Images
$5.50
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Cart
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
1Burnside
1Cedar Hills

Awards

1999 National Book Award winner for Fiction

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

"In Waiting, Ha Jin portrays the life of Lin Kong, a dedicated doctor torn by his love for two women: one who belongs to the New China of the Cultural Revolution, the other to the ancient traditions of his family's village. Ha Jin profoundly understands the conflict between the individual and society, between the timeless universality of the human heart and constantly shifting politics of the moment. With wisdom, restraint, and empathy for all his characters, he vividly reveals the complexities and subtleties of a world and a people we desperately need to know."--Judges' Citation, National Book Award

"Ha Jin's novel could hardly be less theatrical, yet we're immediately engaged by its narrative structure, by its wry humor and by the subtle, startling shifts it produces in our understanding of characters and their situation."--The New York Times Book Review

"Subtle and complex--his best work to date. A moving meditation on the effects of time upon love."--The Washington Post

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

"A portrait of Chinese provincial life that terrifies with its emptiness even more than with its all-pervasive vulgarity. The poet in [Jin] intersperses these human scenes with achingly beautiful vignettes of natural beauty."--Los Angeles Times

"A simple love story that transcends cultural barriers--. From the idyllic countryside to the small towns in northeast China, Jin's depictions are filled with an earthy poetic grace--. Jin's account of daily life in China is convincing and rich in detail."--The Chicago Tribune

"Compassionate, earthy, robust, and wise, Waiting blends provocative allegory with all-too-human comedy. The result touches and reveals, bringing to life a singular world in its spectacular intricacy."--Gish Jen, author of Who's Irish?

"A remarkable love story. Ha Jin's understanding of the human heart and the human condition transcends borders and time. Waiting is an outstanding literary achievement."--Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain

Review

"A simple love story that transcends cultural barriers....Jin's account of daily life in China is convincing and rich in detail." Chicago Tribune

Review

"A deceptively simple tale, written with extraordinary precision and grace. Ha Jin has established himself as one of the great sturdy realists still writing in a postmodern age." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"A remarkable love story. Ha Jin's understanding of the human heart and the human condition transcends borders and time. Waiting is an outstanding literary achievement." Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain

Review

"This touching story about love, honor, duty, and family speaks...to readers on matters of the heart." Library Journal

Synopsis

With wisdom, restraint, and empathy for all his characters, Ha Jin portrays the life of Lin Kong, a dedicated doctor torn by his love for two women: one who belongs to the New China of the Cultural Revolution, the other to the ancient traditions of his family's village.

Synopsis

This is the story of Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women as he moves through the political minefields of a society designed to regulate his every move and stifle the promptings of his innermost heart.

For more than seventeen years this devoted and ambitious doctor has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young — a humble and touchingly loyal woman, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different.

Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of custom.


About the Author

Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of the internationally bestselling novel Waiting, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Award, and War Trash, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize; the story collections The Bridegroom, which won the Asian American Literary Award, Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery OConnor Award for Short Fiction, and Ocean of Words, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award; the novels The Crazed and In the Pond; and three books of poetry. His latest novel, A Free Life is his first novel set in the United States. He lives in the Boston area and is a professor of English at Boston University.

War Trash, The Crazed, The Bridegroom, Waiting, In the Pond, and Ocean of Words are available in paperback from Vintage Books.


Reading Group Guide

1. 18. Ha Jin has not returned to China since he left in 1985; in 1990, he made a commitment to write and speak solely in English. Speaking of that decision, he says, "There was a lot of fear. It's like changing your body, to write in a different language. And it wasn't just a matter of finding an audience, it was a matter of survival—I have a family to support. Finally I decided to write in English, absolutely uncertain of whether I could do it. I'm still uncertain! In the end, though, every project is a risk, not just the language. And that's true for every writer."** How would you characterize the style in which this novel is written? If you have read the work of Vladimir Nabokov or Joseph Conrad, two other emigré writers who adopted English as their literary language, how would you compare Ha Jin's use of the language?

*Atlanta Journal, 15 Nov 1999, E

2. 1.

**From "A conversation with Ha Jin," by Mary Park, amazon.com


The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Ha Jin's National Book Award-winning novel Waiting.

What Our Readers Are Saying

Be the first to share your thoughts on this title!




Product Details

ISBN:
9780375706417
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
09/19/2000
Publisher:
BALLANTINE BOOKS
Series info:
Vintage International
Pages:
320
Height:
.72IN
Width:
5.22IN
Thickness:
.75
Series:
Vintage International
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
1999
Series Volume:
106-769
UPC Code:
2800375706419
Author:
Ha Jin
Author:
Ha Jin
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Love stories
Subject:
Married people
Subject:
Triangles
Subject:
Physicians

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$5.50
List Price:$16.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
1Burnside
1Cedar Hills

More copies of this ISBN

  • New, Trade Paperback, $16.00

This title in other editions

  • New, Other, $28.20
  • Used, Book Club Paperback, Starting from $3.95
  • Used, Hardcover, Starting from $3.95
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Sitemap
  • © 2021 POWELLS.COM Terms

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##