Beijing Coma (Hardcover)

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Review
"Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction"
-- Tash Aw, "Daily Telegraph"
"Epic in scope but intimate in feeling ... magnificent"
-- Tom Deveson, "The Times"
"Simultaneously a large-scale portrait of citizens writing in the grip of the party and the state and a strikingly intimate study of the fragility of the body and the persistence of self and memory"
-- Chandrahas Choudhury, "Observer"
"[Beijing Coma] merits the term 'masterpiece'. . . . [T]he narrative strategy succeeds at creating suspense page after page and lends a poignant, inexorable flavour to the events after the massacre."
-- "The Vancouver Sun"
"A work of fiction so realistic that it can be read as a tragic memoir of a time of hope, turmoil and atrocity. . . . An immaculate lesson in history, it is a vivid reminder that all things change and all is swept away."
-- "The Owen Sound Sun Times
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"Already notorious for writing novels banned in his homeland due to their criticism of China's policies on human rights and Tibet, the now London-based Ma Jian here launches his most sustained and intricate indictment of his former country. . . . As novelist, he painstakingly recreates the cycle of idealism, arrogance, confusion and despair that characterized the experience of demonstrators on the ground in [Tiananmen] square."
-- "Toronto Star
""[Beijing Coma] will make wavesacross the world. . . . Ma combines a gift for densely detailed, panoramic fiction with a resonant prophetic voice. . . . Beijing Coma" "may have huge documentary value, but it grips and moves as epic fiction above all . . . Beijing Coma has the visceral physicality that stamps all of Ma Jian's work. He is a poet of the body in all its ecstasies, embarrassments and agonies."
-- "The Independant"
"A huge achievement . . . a landmark account through fiction of a country whose rise has amazed the world, but which remains cloaked in shadows. . . . finely written and translated."
-- "The Times
""This is an epic yet intimate work that deserves to be recognised and to endure as "the "great Tiananmen novel."
-- "Financial Times
""This timely yet dazzling piece of fiction will be seen simply for what it is: a modern literary masterpiece."
-- "Sunday Express
""This vivid, pungent, often blackly funny book is a mighty gesture of remembrance against the encroaching forces of silence."
-- "Guardian
""Astonishingly brave... the most important Chinese book since Wild Swans."
-- "London Lite"
"[A] bleak, wrenching generational saga . . . Ma Jian achieves startling effects through Dai Wei's dispassionate narration, making one man's felled body a symbol of lost possibility."
-- "Publishers Weekly
""One of the most important and courageous voices in Chinese literature."
-- Gao Xingjian, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"Ma Jian is arguably his country's essential writer."
-- "The Globe and Mail"

Financial Times
`...an epic yet intimate work that deserves to be recognised and to endure as the great Tiananmen novel... magnificent book'

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3 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   19 of 23 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Freedom of thought: a modern classic, 18 May 2008 By  Petrolhead (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews    Every now and again a book comes along that defines the spirit of a great moment in history: All Quiet on the Western Front, Doctor Zhivago, maybe Red Star over China. But until now there has apparently been nothing that encapsulates the idealism, chaos and horror of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and massacre. Beijing Coma may well be the epic novel that China-watchers have been waiting for. Just like Doctor Zhivago, Beijing Coma is too close to the bone for the Communist censors and will remain banned for many years in the author's home country. But no matter - the genie is out of the bottle. China's porous borders, vast diaspora and insatiable appetite for self-examination will ensure that Ma Jian's book will slowly seep into China's consciousness, reminding readers of the cracks in the system that the Communist leadership can only camouflage with economic miracles and Olympic fanfare - Beijing's bread and circuses. On the face of it, Beijing Coma might seem a depressing read. The story of doomed youth is told through the memories of comatose narrator Dai Wei, who lies immobile but conscious, having been felled by a policeman's bullet during the crackdown. But the narrative is anything but stagnant, as it chops rapidly between the doomed student protests and the conversations Dai Wei overhears over the years lying in his mother's apartment, as he waits for his brain to die or his body to move. The pacy dual narrative structure weaves pre- and post-Tiananmen events together as we hurtle towards the fateful conclusion. Although most readers will surely know the student protests ended in a bloodbath, Ma Jian drip-feeds clues about the fate of each character until the very end, and Dai Wei's slightly delirious musings about his past and the fragments of overheard conversation add a second and third dimension to the politics of the protests. Ma Jian's depictions of the student movement and the coma are authentic. He witnessed the demonstrations at first hand, although he was apparently called away to hospital (to tend to his own comatose brother, who was hurt in an accident) before the crackdown was launched. He describes the coma intimately and sensitively but unsentimentally, and he is an equally uncompromising chronicler of the student movement. Although this book has been banned by the authorities, some of the veterans of the protest will surely feel stung by his frank portrayal. "We're trapped between irrational politicans and irrational students," one of the student leaders says at one point. It's hard to disagree. Anyone who has witnessed student politics and studied political revolutions will find Beijing Coma offers a fascinating window on the subtle transmutation of one into the other. The narrator is a tough kid, honest and unpretentious, who runs security for the student movement, which affords him a ringside view of the protests, hunger stike, leadership and massacre. The students start off boisterous, become rebellious, then evolve through radical, activist, bureaucratic, factional, polemic, anarchic and finally chaotic. In the end I admired their youthful idealism and courage but could find no sympathy for their selfishness, hypocrisy and infighting. Groups and individuals lurch from self-sacrifice to egotism, from pacifism to militancy, and proclaim themselves to be in charge without any apparent sense of irony. Although this is fiction, it has a solid grounding in fact. In one true incident that crops up in the book, three men throw paint-filled eggs at the huge portrait of Mao on Tiananmen gate. The students hand the men over to the police, condemning them to more than a decade in jail. This astonishing act, clearly a breath-taking betrayal of fellow-dissidents, is justified by the students as protecting the movement against agents-provocateurs. The memories, sounds and smells that colour Dai Wei's coma add a lucid foil to events on Tiananmen Square. Our eavesdropping on his mother's life, as she busies herself around him and welcomes friends and relatives, provides a gossipy soap opera that lightens the mood. A few of Dai Wei's fellow students come to visit, gradually filling in events after the massacre. We find ourselves on a voyage through post-Tiananmen China, caught up in the proscribed Falun Gong movement and steam-rollered by preparations for the Olympics. Dai Wei's fragmentary recollections of life before the protests slowly reconstruct the personal and political backdrop to the events on the square. He tenderly remembers the four girls he loved, and one he admired from afar, and each of them return to haunt the final act. And even earlier memories uncover the terrible history punishment meted out to "rightists" such as his father. All this amounts to a tragic history of modern Chinese dissent, which would have been an achievement for any author. By telescoping the picture through Dai Wei's comatose mind's eye, Ma Jian has written an outrageous, bold, damning classic. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   8 of 11 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars The Very Heart Of Darkness, 14 Jul 2008 By  The Wolf (uk) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)       That we are free to read this extraordinary book and that Ma Jian was free to write it is a testament to hard-won freedoms that we in The West sometimes take for granted. This significant publication is both a tour de force and a labour of love for a remembered homeland. Dai Wai is both the lost voice of a generation and a moment in time. The function of memory lays at the heart of this deeply moving book. Memory as testimony. Memory as history: fragile, elusive and disposable. Memory as a struggle for clarity and unerasable truth. Memory as a salve and a sword. The complex and shifting narrative dispassionately and at times terrifyingly describes an age ( an age still unfolding ) where the erosion of all that might be great about being human, the possibility of maximising the potential of a great people and nation, is reduced to a miasma of murder, torture, fear, propaganda and brutally enforced complicity. There are moments of great tenderness too. Despite her fear, Dai Wai's mother's love and commitment to his care is a bright unextinguishable beacon shining in the ruins of the bleakest coexistence imaginable. That Ma Jian does not turn away from the horrors of history ( and there are many horrors described within these pages ) will not endear him to China's current leaders and we must surely applaud him for that. In this Olympic year, where the world's governments have chosen to turn a blind eye to China's blatant continuing human rights abuses, Beijing Coma's own burning torch illuminates the travesty more than a hundred hypocritically and diplomatically worded speeches ever could. That the book appears at this moment in time, if not coincidental, is certainly apt. Highly recommended. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   4.0 out of 5 stars Enlgihtening and Horrifying, 8 Jun 2009 By  Katie Evans - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    This review is from: Beijing Coma (Paperback) This book provided me with a wealth of knowledge about the experiences of students in Tianamen Square in 1989. I feel enlightened for reading it. I felt for the characters and was moved by Ma Jian's writing. It is very long and not always gripping, however, particularly at the beginning. I am glad that I ploughed through and would encourage everyone to do the same. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 3 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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