num_pages: 368
description: Ha Jin’s masterful new novel casts a searchlight into a forgotten corner of modern history, the experience of Chinese soldiers held in U.S. POW camps during the Korean War. In 1951 Yu Yuan, a scholarly and self-effacing clerical officer in Mao’s “volunteer” army, is taken prisoner south of the 38th Parallel. Because he speaks English, he soon becomes an intermediary between his compatriots and their American captors.With Yuan as guide, we are ushered into the secret world behind the barbed wire, a world where kindness alternates with blinding cruelty and one has infinitely more to fear from one’s fellow prisoners than from the guards. Vivid in its historical detail, profound in its imaginative empathy, War Trash is Ha Jin’s most ambitious book to date.
language: English
title: War Trash
titlecomplete: War Trash
genres: Asia, Historical Fiction, Historical, Literary Fiction, Novels, Asian Literature, Literature, War, China, Fiction
ratings_count: 3872
places: Korea
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Kiriyama Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: 亞洲週刊中文十大好書
publisher: Vintage