Book: The Crazed by Ha Jin

Surprised that I did not read this book when it was first released in 2002.

A few published reviews would give a glimpse of what a good book this is:

"...work of extraordinary moral and aesthetic lucidity.." "... with Dickensian deftness...", "a work of enormous intelligence", "piercing, critical" and prosaic.

The first-person narrator,Jian, a graduate teacher at a fictional university in China, was profoundly changed when he was exposed to the innermost emotional rendering of his teacher, a renowned professor of poetics who was also to be his father-in-law soon.

 

After the professor's unexpected death, Jian withdrew from applying for a Ph.D.program at Beijing university, thus losing the only opportunity to start a life with his fiancee in Beijing. To show his estranged financee that he was not a coward and could go to Beijing any time he wanted, Jian joined a group of students from his university heading for Tiananmen Square on June 3, 1989. Being one of the only two graduate students in the group, he reluctantly accepted a leader's role despite the fact that he was never politically active. There in Beijing, Jian witnessed first hand what it was like when the demonstrators and the soldiers met on the Beijing streets and how his life was altered thereafter.

The book title can be interpreted in so many different angles: Who are the crazed? The professor? Jian? The politically savvy people on campus and out there? The small people? The power thirsty? The money hungry? The poverty-stricken peasants? The passionate students? The soldiers? The national figures?

That is for the reader to decide.

Ha Jin's unique writing style made the reading solitary and yet thought provoking. This is a good book to read and also a good book to add to the personal libary.