Ma Jian was born in Qingdao, China, in 1953. He worked as a watch-mender’s apprentice, a painter of propaganda boards, and a photojournalist. At the age of thirty, he left his job and traveled for three years across China. In 1987 he completed Stick Out Your Tongue, which... More
All Things Considered on Beijing Coma
Washington Post Q&A with Ma Jian
Los Angeles Times feature on Ma Jian
Ma Jian's June 4th Op-Ed to the New York Times
“Indelible…for all its savagery, “Beijing Coma” is one of the most optimistic novels I’ve encountered in a long time.”—New York Times Book Review
“Powerful. . . In the wonderful translation by Flora Drew (the author's wife and translator of his other works), the memories of a tremendous moment in the history of this vast, ungraspable place become grounded in a narrative that encompasses almost all that writing can offer.”—The Nation
“Ma Jian has accomplished something extremely difficult. That is, he has created a work of art that functions simultaneously as literature and call to action….You wish that copies of this book could be distributed along the route of the Olympic torch’s progress toward the upcoming Beijing games, an event that might not be taking place had the world not succumbed to the seductions of forgetfulness—the same dangers and temptations that Ma Jian’s hero, and his novel, struggle so valiantly to resist.”—Francine Prose, New York Review of Books
"[A] breathtaking novel...Part of the genius of this novel lies in Ma Jian's ability to place moments of almost slapstick comedy in scenes of true gravity...Richly textured and finely balanced...Once in a while-perhaps every ten years, or even a generation—a novel comes along that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction.” —Tash Aw, The Telegraph
“Ma Jian's powerful Beijing Coma is an instructive novel to read during the Olympics. Written by a Chinese dissident, Coma deals with the massacre at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, when tanks rolled over students and their demand for more freedom.”—USA Today
“Beijing Coma's descriptions of life under Mao and the Gang of Four, and of the events leading up to the June 4 massacre, are powerfully engrossing passages of narrative, and a moving testament to a history that the Party powers would prefer to forget.”—Newsweek International
“Enthralling.”—Dallas Morning News
“Superb.”—Charleston Post and Courier
“At once tragic, darkly humorous and deeply sad, Beijing Coma is a monumental work.”-St. Petersburg Times
"One of the most important and courageous voices in international literature." —Gao Xingjian, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature
“Both in [Ma’s] personal courage and resolution, and in the truth-telling majesty of Beijing Coma – his epic novel of the Tiananmen Square massacre and its aftermath, right up the building of the Olympic Stadium on land snatched from thousands of evicted citizens – Ma looks to me like a true successor to the author of Cancer Ward and The First Circle.”—Independent London
53 KB
Found in: General Fiction
Visit our UK site
