From Ha Jin, the widely-acclaimed, award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash , comes a novel that takes his fiction to a new setting: 1990s America. We follow the Wu family--father Nan, mother Pingping, and son Taotao--as they fully sever their ties with China in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and begin a new, free life in the United States. At first, their future seems well-assured--Nan’s graduate work in political science at Brandeis University would guarantee him a teaching position in China--but after the fallout from Tiananmen, Nan’s disillusionment turns him towards his first love, poetry. Leaving his studies, he takes on a variety of menial jobs while Pingping works for a wealthy widow as a cook and housekeeper. As Nan struggles to adapt to a new language and culture, his love of poetry and literature sustains him through difficult, lean years. Ha Jin creates a moving, realistic, but always hopeful narrative as Nan moves from Boston to New York to Atlanta, ever in search of financial stability and success, even in a culture that sometimes feels oppressive and hostile. As Pingping and Taotao slowly adjust to American life, Nan still feels a strange, paradoxical attachment to his homeland, though he violently disagrees with Communist policy. And severing all ties--including his love for a woman who rejected him in his youth--proves to be more difficult than he could have ever imagined. Ha Jin’s prodigious talents are evident in this powerful new book, which brilliantly brings to life the struggles and successes that characterize the contemporary immigrant experience. With its lyrical prose and confident grace, A Free Life is a luminous addition to the works of one of the preeminent writers in America today. Since emigrating from China to America in the 1980s to study literature, Ha Jin has become one of the most celebrated voices in American literature. A Free Life is his first "American" book, a "Chekhovian portrait of life and its soothing dailiness" (Vikram Johri) that explores the meaning of a truly free life. Critics often comment on the author’s lyricism and the fluidity of his prose (interestingly, one reviewer notes a connection between Jin and John Steinbeck, while another noted a deficiency in prose). Although rarely plot-driven, Jin’s novels instead unfold slowlyâ€"like life itself. A Free Life offers the greatest reward to those who read with patience and in quiet contemplation, absorbing the author’s passion for language. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. *Starred Review* A poet as well as a fiction writer, Ha Jin writes of sacrifice, isolation, and valor with uncommon perception. In his earlier novels, including Waiting (1999), winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and War Trash (2002), also a PEN/Faulkner Award winner, he looks back to China, his homeland. In his seventh work of fiction, Ha Jin anatomizes the immigrant experience. Nan Wu, a Chinese graduate student in Boston, drops out after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He would like to abandon his marriage, too, but his sense of duty toward Pingping and their young son is stronger than his desire for passion and the freedom to write poetry. So Nan laboriously progresses from busboy to chef, then purchases a small Chinese restaurant outside Atlanta, Georgia. He and Pingping work hard, live frugally, and strive to understand their baffling new world, including white friends who adopt a Chinese daughter. While Pingping evinces great strength of character, Nan remains deeply conflicted over his longing for art and his commitment to pragmatism until his ruminations on everything from the lives of birds to the differences between Chinese and English precipitate a profound liberation. For Nan, a free life is an honest and creative life. Capacious, pointillistic, empathic, and tender, Ha Jin's tale of one immigrant family's odyssey in America affirms humankind's essential mission, to honor life. Seaman, Donna Praise for the works of Ha Jin: WAR TRASH "Powerfully moving... Brilliant and original... Timeless and universal... Nearly perfect;" --Russell Banks, The New York Times Book Review THE CRAZED "Reading [Ha Jin] is almost like falling in love: you experience anxiety, profound self-consciousness, and an uncomfortable sensitivity to the world--and somehow it's a pleasure... Like the best realist writers, Ha Jin sneaks emotional power into the plainest declarative sentences." -- The New Yorker THE BRIDEGROOM "Shows that Ha Jin could teach some native-born writers a few things about the beauty of spare prose and the power of a few well-chosen words." -- USA Today WAITING "Achingly beautiful... Ha Jin depicts the details of social etiquette, of food, or rural family relationships and the complex and alarmingly primitive fabric of provincial life with that absorbed passion for minutiae characteristic of Dickens and Balzac." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review