The Crazed A Novel

Pantheon. New in New dust jacket. 2002. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. 0375421815 . New book, unmarked, in crisp dj.; 1.11 x 8.5 x 5.72 Inches; 323 pages; Since the appearance of his first book of stories in English, Ha Jin has won the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and garnered comparisons to Dickens, Balzac, and Isaac Babel. &#8220;Like Babel,&#8221; wrote Francine Prose in The <i>New York Times Book Review</i>, &#8220;Ha Jin observes everything . . . yet he tells the reader only&#8212;and precisely&#8212;as much as is needed to make his deceptively simple fiction resonate on many levels.&#8221;<br><br>In his luminous new novel, the author of <i>Waiting</i> deepens his portrait of contemporary Chinese society while exploring the perennial conflicts between convention and individualism, integrity and pragmatism, loyalty and betrayal. Professor Yang, a respected teacher of literature at a provincial university, has had a stroke, and his student Jian Wan&#8212;who is also engaged to Yang&#8217;s daughter&#8212;has been assigned to care for him. What at first seems a simple if burdensome duty becomes treacherous when the professor begins to rave: pleading with invisible tormentors, denouncing his family, his colleagues, and a system in which a scholar is &#8220;just a piece of meat on a cutting board.&#8221;<br><br>Are these just manifestations of illness, or is Yang spewing up the truth? And can the dutiful Jian avoid being irretrievably compromised? For in a China convulsed by the Tiananmen uprising, those who hear the truth are as much at risk as those who speak it. At once nuanced and fierce, earthy and humane, <i>The Crazed</i> is further evidence of Ha Jin&#8217;s prodigious narrative gifts. .