Under the Red Flag
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Ha Jin |
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| Subtitle | Stories |
| Publisher | Zoland Books |
| Honors | |
| Set in the northern Chinese provincial town of Dismount Fort, these twelve stories offer a fascinating glimpse into the lives of peasants, soldiers, workers, and party officials during the Great Cultural Revolution. This was a time of social upheaval reaching into every home, when the Red Guard could drag a woman accused of prostitution through the streets; when a man trying to honor his mother’s dying wish runs up against party orthodoxy. Ha Jin has been compared to the late Isaac Babel for his spare evocation of ordinary lives caught up in the flux of vast… | |
Set in the northern Chinese provincial town of Dismount Fort, these twelve stories offer a fascinating glimpse into the lives of peasants, soldiers, workers, and party officials during the Great Cultural Revolution. This was a time of social upheaval reaching into every home, when the Red Guard could drag a woman accused of prostitution through the streets; when a man trying to honor his mother’s dying wish runs up against party orthodoxy.
Ha Jin has been compared to the late Isaac Babel for his spare evocation of ordinary lives caught up in the flux of vast social movements. He is a writer of stark power, simple beauty, and poignant irony, whose themes of personal honor in the face of political rectitude are unmatched in American literature today.
