In the Pond (Vintage International) - Softcover

Jin, Ha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375709118 ISBN 13: 9780375709111

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

National Book Award-winner Ha Jin's arresting debut novel, In the Pond, is a darkly funny portrait of an amateur calligrapher who wields his delicate artist's brush as a weapon against the powerful party bureaucrats who rule his provincial Chinese town.

Shao Bin is a downtrodden worker at the Harvest Fertilizer Plant by day and an aspiring artist by night. Passed over on the list to receive a decent apartment for his young family, while those in favor with the party's leaders are selected ahead of him, Shao Bin chafes at his powerlessness. When he attempts to expose his corrupt superiors by circulating satirical cartoons, he provokes an escalating series of merciless counterattacks that send ripples beyond his small community. Artfully crafted and suffused with earthy wit, In the Pond is a moving tale about humble lives caught up in larger social forces.

About this title

Review:

"Ravishing . . . vividly described." --The Village Voice

"Though art and politics figure in the action, In the Pond is first and foremost a comedy-naughty, lusty, raucously entertaining. Ha Jin's language echoes working-class Chinese at its rough, bawdy best." --The New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating . . . spare and taut. . . . A fable about morality and power." --Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher:

By the author of Waiting
‘Fascinating...spare and taut...A fable about morality and power’ Chicago Tribune

‘Though art and politics figure in the action, In the Pond is first and foremost a comedy – naughty, lusty, raucously entertaining. Ha Jin’s language echoes working-class Chinese at its rough, bawdy best’ New York Times Book Review

Shao Bin is a factory fitter in a small Chinese town, a poor and unconnected man with a young wife and a small child, but also an accomplished artist and calligrapher. He’s worked at the plant for six years, so feels that this time his family will get an apartment in Worker’s Park, where his wife won’t have to walk two miles to wash their clothes. But the Party controls everything in the town, and again the apartments go to corrupt officials and their cronies. Outraged, Bin pens a series of satirical cartoons attacking them, and finds his trouble is only just beginning.

‘Ha Jin captures the particulars of life in China, yet we recognise his characters intimately. The ‘otherness’ of this most foreign nation falls away as one vividly drawn human after another takes flesh on the page’ Boston Globe

‘Fascinating, refreshing, and uncommonly subtle: Ha Jin has made China available to a new world and a world of new readers’ Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375709118
• ISBN 13: 9780375709111
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192