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 appartment 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 political cartoons attacking them, and finds his trouble is only just beginning.
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Product Description:
Ha Jin's themes of personal honour in the face of political rectitude are carried forward here in his first novel, a close, unsentimental depiction of life in a small factory town; the manoeuvring, posturing, petty jealousies and injustices of an ordinary man who tangles with party bosses.
Review:
"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)
"Fascinating...spare and taut... A fable about morality and power" (Chicago Tribune)
"Ha Jin captures the particularities 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)
"A compelling exploration of the terrain that is the human heart... an all too rare reminder of the reasons why someone might feel so strongly about a book" (New York Times)
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- PublisherVintage
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0099428164
- ISBN 13 9780099428169
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages192
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Rating