Recommendations from our site
“Ha Jin’s novel is obviously based on either his experience or his father’s experience of the Korean War. There are some very stark and striking descriptions. He didn’t have access to South Korea, but he has this wonderful ability to treat everybody fairly and to listen to the songs of women guerrillas that were captured by South Korean prison camps and enjoy listening to them. He does the same thing with North Korean and Chinese soldiers and the civilians who were caught up in the battle” Read more...
The best books on The Korean War
Bruce Cumings, Historian
“It’s written by a young Chinese author who came to the United States. He wrote this book in his second language and still won lots of awards for it, which is very impressive. I think this is a really good book to show the West more about what is going on in China. People think that it’s all about economic growth but there is so much more to our history than that.” Read more...
The best books on China’s Darker Side
Harry Wu, Nonprofit Leaders & Activist
War Trash by the Chinese novelist Ha Jin was recommended by Bruce Cumings, Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of History and the College at the University of Chicago and one of the world’s leading authorities on the Korean War. He says, “I just thought that it was a very clear-eyed and true account. It rings very true when you know what is in the archives, even though he didn’t do archive research at all.” War Trash also won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
