Awards
2005 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Synopses & Reviews
War Trash, the extraordinary new novel by the National Book Award–winning author of Waiting, is Ha Jins most ambitious work to date: a powerful, unflinching story that opens a window on an unknown aspect of a little-known warthe experiences of Chinese POWs held by Americans during the Korean conflictand paints an intimate portrait of conformity and dissent against a sweeping canvas of confrontation.
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 inhabita 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 prisoners 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 novelan astonishing addition to the literature of war that echoes classics like Dostoevskys Memoirs from the House of the Dead and the works of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owenthe very concept of home will be more profoundly altered than they can even begin to imagine.
Review
"[Jin's] narrator, Yu Yuan, is one of the most fully realized characters to emerge from the fictional world in years....[A] moral fable, timeless and universal." Russell Banks, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Ha Jin's taut drama of war, incarceration, coercion, and survival is galvanizing, and his ardently observant narrator is heroic in his grappling with the paradox of humankind's savagery and hunger for the divine." Booklist
Review
"[P]owerfully moving.... Appearances to the contrary..., though War Trash is indeed a work of fiction, one has to keep reminding oneself of that fact. The seamless, somewhat unsettling fusion of invention and reportage is aided and abetted by the fact that Ha Jin taps into two ancient and honorable Western literary traditions the novel in the form of a nonfiction memoir, and the nonfiction memoir as prison narrative.... It's a brilliant and original enjambment, and Ha Jin pulls it off with mastery; the result is that his narrator, Yu Yuan, is one of the most fully realized characters to emerge from the fictional world in years.... With the suspense building toward a surprising climax and an utterly satisfying end, there is a philosophical certitude and serenity in the final pages of the novel that one rarely experiences in fiction. It is a Buddhist calm.... War Trash is not a large novel, but it is a nearly perfect one." Russell Banks, New York Times Book Review
Review
"Born in 1956, Jin missed the Korean War, but he lied about his age when he was 14 to join the People's Liberation Army in China, and this novel is steeped in the details of history as much as in the flavor of personal experience. In fact, the voice of War Trash is a rebuttal of its title. It's a timely story about discarded survivors whose lives are more complex and more pitiable than the ideology on either side would have us believe." Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire Christian Science Monitor review)
Synopsis
From the National Book Award-winning author of
Waiting, here is his most ambitious work to date; a powerful, unflinching novel that opens a window on an unknown aspect of a little-known war the experiences of Chinese POWs held by Americans during the Korean conflict and paints an intimate story against a sweeping canvas of confrontation.
Set in 1951 and based on historical accounts, War Trash takes the form of the memoir of Yu Yuan, a young Chinese army officer, a "volunteer" fighting unofficially in Korea when he is captured. Yu's fluency in English thrusts him into the role of unofficial interpreter in the psychological warfare between the prisoners and their captors and between rival groups of prisoners that defines the world of the POW camp. Yu's only allegiance is to his dream of returning home. But by the end of this unforgettable novel, the very concept of home will be more profoundly altered than Yu can even begin to imagine.