The Bridegroom - Softcover

Jin, Ha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099422174 ISBN 13: 9780099422174

Publisher: Vintage, 2001

Synopsis

This new collection of short stories by the award-winning author of Waiting confirms Ha Jin's reputation as a master storyteller, as well as a master of the miniature.

In The Bridegroom, the twelve stories capture a China in transition, moving from Maoism towards a more open society. For these men and women, starting to feel the influence of the West, the daily dramas of a system that still struggles to control their every move and thought are made all the more painful. As his characters, from an entrepreneur, transformed from black-market criminal to free market hero, to the workers at Cowboy Chicken, to the professor mistaken by the police for a saboteur, continue to struggle against petty injustices and heartbreaks, Ha Jin celebrates their lives and humanity with the understated humour and simplicity that has won him widespread acclaim.

About this title

Review:

In The Bridegroom, a vibrant collection of 12 stories, Ha Jin returns to Muji City, post-Cultural Revolution, where the confusions and excitements of transitions great and small spark off unpredictable consequences. These upheavals are seen through the toings and froings of everyday men and women, arrested on trumped-up charges, applying for larger apartments, waiting to see an old flame, trying to lure a husband and daughter to New York. Sharp comeuppances and the little cruelties on which the world turns--folks made fools of by fate or by other folk--emerge from writing that is deceptively unadorned, unsentimental, as forthright as his wonderfully delineated characters. What marks out these stories is Ha Jin's quiet, sly humour and an unemphatic, but compassionate sense of the absurd.

In "Alive", after a terrible earthquake, the Form New Families movement urges people to remarry, and at the dour celebration, 21 couples sing out "Even My Parents are Not as Dear as the Party and Chairman Mao". In the title story, the homely Beina has managed to carry off Baowen, the handsomest man in the sewing machine factory. And even if she is still a virgin after eight months, "I don't have to worry about those shameless bitches in our factory. He doesn't bother to give them a look. He'll never have a lifestyle problem." But his lifestyle problem is his homosexuality in the eyes of those who ensnare him: "What a wonderful husband he could have been were he not sick", muses his father-in-law.

The hopes and bewilderments of a world in which East increasingly meets West are affectionately turned into small treasures in this fine collection. Ha Jin's novel Waiting won the National Book Award in the United States (the author has lived there since leaving China in 1985) and two earlier collections of short stories also garnered impressive awards and praise. Ruth Petrie

Review:

"Ha Jin has the kind of effortless command that most writers can only dream about" (New York Times Magazine)

"Ha Jin's eye for detail, his great storytelling talent, suffuse his work and make The Bridegroom a genuine pleasure" (New York Times Book Review)

"Beautifully understated short stories-Some of them are likely to break your heart" (People Magazine)

"A genuine pleasure" (New York Times Book Review)

"The Bridegroom...showcases [Ha Jin's] mastery of craft, the consummate restraint and nearly telegraphic objectivity with which he paints difficult truths" (Boston Globe)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099422174
• ISBN 13: 9780099422174
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240