{ Nov 2021 - Verified ebook for complete book description, cover, table of contents, separation of book (front/ back matter, parts, and chapters), and epub format error checking. }
Paperback, 368 pages
Published: 2004
Edition: Vintage International (2005)
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2005)
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.
Jin ("Waiting"; "The Crazed"; etc.) applies his steady gaze and stripped-bare storytelling to the violence and horrifying political uncertainty of the Korean War in this brave, complex and politically timely work, the story of a reluctant soldier trying to survive a POW camp and reunite with his family. Armed with reams of research, the National Book Award winner aims to give readers a tale that is as much historical record as examination of personal struggle. After his division is decimated by superior American forces, Chinese "volunteer" Yu Yuan, an English-speaking clerical officer with a largely pragmatic loyalty to the Communists, rejects revolutionary martyrdom and submits to capture. In the POW camp, his ability to communicate with the Americans thrusts him to the center of a disturbingly bloody power struggle between two factions of Chinese prisoners: the pro-Nationalists, led in part by the sadistic Liu Tai-an, who publicly guts and dissects one of his enemies; and the pro-Communists, commanded by the coldly manipulative Pei Shan, who wants to use Yu to save his own political skin. An unofficial fighter in a foreign war, shameful in the eyes of his own government for his failure to die, Yu can only stand and watch as his dreams of seeing his mother and fiancée again are eviscerated in what increasingly looks like a meaningless conflict. The parallels with America's current war on terrorism are obvious, but Jin, himself an ex-soldier, is not trying to make a political statement. His gaze is unfiltered, camera-like, and the images he records are all the more powerful for their simple honesty. It is one of the enduring frustrations of Jin's work that powerful passages of description are interspersed with somewhat wooden dialogue, but the force of this story, painted with starkly melancholy longing, pulls the reader inexorably along.

lgrsfic/Ha Jin - War Trash.epub

zlib/Fiction/War & Military Fiction/Ha Jin/War Trash_18186690.epub

War trash : a novel

Jin, Ha

Golden Books Publishing Company, Incorporated

Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Random House, Incorporated

Random House AudioBooks

Vintage International

Pantheon Books

Vintage eBooks

1st Vintage International ed., New York, New York State, 2005

1st Vintage International edition, New York, 2005

Place of publication not identified, 2007

Penguin Random House LLC, New York, 2010

United States, United States of America

Vintage International (2005), 2004

Unabridged, New York, 2013

Reprint, PS, 2005

New York, ©2004

Reprint, 2007

zardox

Includes bibliographical references (p. 351-352).

Set in 1951–53, ***War Trash*** takes the form of the memoir of Yu Yuan, a young Chinese army officer, one of a corps of “volunteers” sent by Mao to help shore up the Communist side in Korea. When Yu is captured, his command of English thrusts him into the role of unofficial interpreter in the psychological warfare that defines the POW camp.
Taking us behind the barbed wire, Ha Jin draws on true historical accounts to render the complex world the prisoners inhabit—a world of strict surveillance and complete allegiance to authority. Under the rules of war and the constraints of captivity, every human instinct is called into question, to the point that what it means to be human comes to occupy the foremost position in every prisoner’s mind.
As Yu and his fellow captives struggle to create some sense of community while remaining watchful of the deceptions inherent in every exchange, only the idea of home can begin to hold out the promise that they might return to their former selves. But by the end of this unforgettable novel—an astonishing addition to the literature of war that echoes classics like Dostoevsky’s *Memoirs from the House of the Dead* and the works of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen—the very concept of home will be more profoundly altered than they can even begin to imagine.

Captured By Enemy Forces, Yu Yuan, A Chinese Army Officer Serving In Korea In 1951, Takes On The Role Of Interpreter Due To His Proficiency In English, A Role That Places Him In A Conflict Between His Fellow Prisoners And Their Captors. 1. Crossing The Yalu -- 2. Our Collapse South Of The Thirty-eighth Parallel -- 3. Three Months Of Guerrilla Life -- 4. Dr. Greene -- 5. Compound 72 On Koje Island -- 6. Father Woodworth -- 7. Betrayal -- 8. Dinner -- 9. Before The Screening -- 10. Screening -- 11. Compound 602 -- 12. Staging A Play -- 13. Unusual Request -- 14. Test -- 15. Meeting With Mr. Park -- 16. Meeting With General Bell -- 17. Abduction Of General Bell -- 18. After The Victory -- 19. Apprehension Of Commissar Pei -- 20. Arrival At Cheju Island -- 21. Communication And Study -- 22. Pei Code -- 23. Visit Of A Young Woman -- 24. Raising The National Flag -- 25. Another Sacrificed Life -- 26. Kill! -- 27. Talk With Captain Larsen -- 28. Entertainment And Work -- 29. Surprise -- 30. Final Order -- 31. At The Reregistration -- 32. Back To Cheju -- 33. Confusion -- 34. Good Companion -- 35. In The Demiltarized Zone -- 36. Different Fate. Ha Jin. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 351-352).

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. From the Trade Paperback edition

2021-11-20