Beijing Coma

Last updated

Beijing Coma
CoverofBeijingComa.jpg
Author Ma Jian
TranslatorFlora Drew
LanguageChinese
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication placeUnited States
Published in English
May 27, 2008
Media typePrint
Pages592 ppg
ISBN 0374110174

Beijing Coma is a 2008 novel by Ma Jian. It was translated from Chinese by Flora Drew. [1] The Chinese government has since banned the book. [2] Ma has stated that he wrote the book "to reclaim history from a totalitarian government whose role is to erase it" and named the novel Beijing Coma in reference to this. [3] [4] Beijing Coma was listed as one of The New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2008". [5]

Contents

Synopsis

The book follows the character of Dai Wei, a man who awakens from a coma to discover that ten years have passed since he was shot in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. The book's narrative switches between Dai Wei's time as a non-responsive coma patient to his life before his shooting.

Reception

Critical reception for the book was positive, [6] [7] [8] with Tash Aw calling it "a landmark". [9] In Bookmarks Sep/Oct 2008 issue, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg (4.00 out of 5) with the summary stating, "Even reviewers who found serious problems with Beijing Coma admired its political honesty and narrative premise". [10]

Pankaj Mishra compared Beijing Coma with the work of writers such as Milan Kundera, Josef Škvorecký and Ivan Klíma. [1] Michiko Kakutani praised the novel's translation while stating that the book "is desperately in need of editing". [11]

Controversy

In April 2012 Ma protested the choice of China as the guest of honor at the London Book Fair. [12] Ma used red paint to smear a cross over his face and attempted to present a copy of Beijing Coma to Liu Binjie, but was stopped by security. Ma called his Chinese publisher a "mouthpiece of the Chinese communist party" and claimed that he had been manhandled while trying to give Liu his book. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre</span> Chinese pro-democracy movement and subsequent massacre

The Tiananmen Square protests, known in China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government declared martial law on the night of 3 June and deployed troops to occupy the square in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising.

<i>Wen Wei Po</i> Hong Kong-based Chinese language newspaper

Wen Wei Po is a pro-Beijing state-owned newspaper based in Hong Kong. The newspaper was established in Hong Kong on 9 September 1948, 10 years after the launch of its Shanghai counterpart in 1938.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cui Jian</span> Chinese singer-songwriter (born 1961)

Cui Jian is a Beijing-based Chinese singer-songwriter, trumpeter and guitarist. Affectionately called "Old Cui", he is credited with pioneering Chinese rock music. For this distinction he is often labeled the "Father of Chinese Rock". He is also known in the Chinese rock music industry as a "leader in promoting the true singing movement" and the "first person in Chinese rock".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Phillips</span> American novelist

Arthur Phillips is an American novelist. His books include Prague (2002), The Egyptologist (2004), Angelica (2007), The Song Is You (2009), The Tragedy of Arthur (2011), and The King at the Edge of the World (2020).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pankaj Mishra</span> Award-winning Indian essayist-novelist (born 1969)

Pankaj Mishra is an Indian essayist, novelist, and socialist. His non-fiction works include Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond, along with From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, and A Great Clamour: Encounters with China and Its Neighbours, and he has published two novels. He is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and prolific contributor to other periodicals such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. His writings have led to a number of controversies, including disputes with Salil Tripathi, Niall Ferguson and Jordan Peterson. He was awarded the Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michiko Kakutani</span> American critic, writer (b. 1955)

Michiko Kakutani is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ding Zilin</span>

Ding Zilin is a retired professor of philosophy and the leader of the political activist group Tiananmen Mothers. Ding is the mother of Jiang Jielian, one of the first student protestors killed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and ensuing crackdown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ma Jian (writer)</span> Chinese-born British writer (born 1953)

Ma Jian is a Chinese-born British writer.

Federation for a Democratic China is a Canada based political group that advocates the democratization of China through opposition of the Chinese Communist Party and the support of human rights. It was founded on September 22, 1989 in Paris, France, following the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests.

Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi is a Malaysian writer living in London.

<i>The Discomfort Zone</i> Book by Jonathan Franzen

The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History is a 2006 memoir by Jonathan Franzen, who received the National Book Award for Fiction for his novel The Corrections in 2001.

<i>Falling Man</i> (novel) 2007 novel by Don DeLillo

Falling Man is a novel by American writer Don DeLillo, published May 15, 2007. An excerpt from the novel appeared in short story form as "Still Life" in the April 9, 2007, issue of The New Yorker magazine.

<i>The Writer and the World</i>

The Writer and the World: Essays (2002) is a collection of essays and reportage, many previously published, spanning the 50-year career of Trinidad-born British writer V. S. Naipaul. The book contains some of Naipaul's most notable essays on post-colonial India, Trinidad, and Zaire. Originally published in the United States by Knopf, it was issued in paperback by Vintage in 2003. The book is edited and introduced by Pankaj Mishra.

The Asia House Festival of Asian Literature, is the first and only Literary festival in the UK dedicated to writing about Asia.

Philip P. Pan is an American journalist, author, and International Editor at The New York Times. He previously worked as bureau chief in Moscow and Beijing for The Washington Post.

Chinese crime fiction is an umbrella term which generally refers to Sinophone literature concerned with the investigation and punishment of criminal acts. In mainland China the most popular subgenre is "detective fiction".

<i>Untold Story</i> (novel) Novel by Monica Ali

Untold Story is a novel by Monica Ali, her fourth book after two novels and a collection of short stories. It asks what would have happened if Princess Diana had not died in a car accident in Paris in 1997 but had arranged for her own disappearance and tried to live an undiscovered life in a small American town. In the novel, Princess Diana is portrayed in fictional form as an English expat named Lydia. The story is told through a combination of third person narrative, diary entries of the princess's former personal secretary, Lawrence Standing, and letters written by Lydia.

<i>The Fat Years</i> 2009 novel by Chan Koonchung

The Fat Years is a 2009 Chinese science fiction novel written by Chan Koonchung. First published in traditional Chinese versions in 2009 in both Hong Kong by Oxford University Press and also in Taiwan by the Rye Field Publishing Company under the title 'Prosperous Age: China in the year 2013' (盛世—中國2013年), to date it has never been published in mainland China.

<i>Open City</i> (novel) 2011 novel by Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole

Open City is a 2011 novel by Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole. The novel is primarily set in New York City, and concerns a Nigerian immigrant, Julius, who has recently broken up with his girlfriend. The novel received praise for its prose and depiction of New York.

<i>Ants Among Elephants</i> 2017 book by Sujatha Gidla

Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India is a book by Sujatha Gidla on how India's untouchables (Dalits) struggle to overcome poverty and social ostracism due to the rigid caste system. The book deals with the humiliation and caste-based discrimination which Dalits face in India. The book also looks at the various levels of oppression faced due to caste, gender, and familial norms. Writing in The New York Review of Books, Pankaj Mishra says that the book "significantly enriches the new Dalit literature in English" and that the book is a "devastating critique" of India's independence leaders and the caste politics of the Naxalite movement in India.

References

  1. 1 2 Mishra, Pankaj (June 30, 2008). "Tiananmen's Wake: A novel of hope and cynicism". The New Yorker. Condé Nast Publications. Retrieved June 30, 2008.
  2. Smallwood, Christine (May 25, 2008). "Cage of bones". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  3. Stone, Beth. "Beijing Coma". Socialist Review. Archived from the original on October 14, 2011. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  4. "Tiananmen remembered". BBC News. June 4, 2009. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  5. "100 notable books of 2008". The New York Times. December 4, 2008. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  6. Lasdun, James (May 2, 2008). "Children of the revolution". The Guardian. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  7. Row, Jess (July 13, 2008). "Circling the Square". The New York Times. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  8. Cheuse, Alan (June 29, 2008). "'Beijing Coma' fuses China's past, present". SF Gate. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  9. Aw, Tash (April 26, 2008). "A story of Tiananmen Square". Telegraph. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  10. "Beijing Coma By Ma Jian". Bookmarks Magazine . Archived from the original on September 6, 2015. Retrieved January 14, 2023.
  11. Kakutani, Michiko (July 4, 2008). "A Broken Body in Shiny, New China". The New York Times. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  12. Lane, Victoria (April 17, 2012). "A Letter from China". Telegraph. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
  13. Page, Benedicte (April 19, 2012). "Ma Jian protest paints the London Book Fair red". The Guardian. Retrieved April 19, 2012.